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[Neko Desu]

(Continued from the previous post due to word limit)

Boss Battle Time

Characters: Liquid, Venser, Cleiden
HP: 410, 290, 370

Enemy: Sky Wyrm
HP: 3000

-Liquid goes first. He uses his newly learned skill, 'X-Strike,' from chapter 8; throwing his sword up into the air, Liquid and his sentient blade charge towards the dragon in two diagonal lines that form an X shape. Right before he hits the dragon, Liquid grabs the sword and slashes the creature on the left side of the 'X', the sword then, at the same time, strikes the right side of the 'X' for 450 damage! (Sky Wyrm HP: 2550)

-The wyrm suddenly unfolds its massive wings; powerful beams of rainbow-coloured energy shoot off them, spiraling up into the sky and then down towards the party, doing 150 damage to everyone. Also Liquid falls under the 'Sleep' status, Venser is blinded, and Cleiden is poisoned. (Liquid HP: 260, Venser HP: 140, Cleiden HP: 220)

-Venser throws everyone a Silver Potion by breaking its container, releasing a sweet-smelling gas that recovers 150 HP to the party. (Liquid HP: 410, Venser HP: 290, Cleiden HP: 370)

-Cleiden casts "Esuna" on Liquid, healing him of the Sleep status! He loses 50 HP from poison. (Cleiden HP: 320)

-The wyrm steps forward and slashes Venser for 250 damage! (Venser HP: 40)

-Liquid uses X-Strike on the Sky Wyrm again, doing another 450 damage! (Sky Wyrm HP: 2100)

-Venser drinks a Hyper Potion, recovering 250 HP. (Venser HP: 290)

-The wyrm casts "Explosion", causing a massive burst of fire to consume Cleiden for 300 damage! (Cleiden HP: 20)

-Cleiden eats an Antidote, and recovers from Poison.

-Liquid has run out of energy to use another X-strike! He uses Energy Rain instead, which does 400 damage to the dragon. (Sky Wyrm HP: 1700)

-The Sky Wyrm summons energy to himself, preparing to use its strongest attack right after his next turn.

-Venser throws Cleiden a Hyper potion, recovering back 300 HP to him! (Cleiden HP: 320)

-Cleiden casts "Blizzard" on the Sky Wyrm, causing a freezing white mist to surround the dragon for 180 damage! (Sky Wyrm HP: 1520)

-The dragon spins around, sweeping the party with its tail for 200 damage! (Liquid HP: 210, Venser HP: 90, Cleiden HP: 120)

-Liquid uses Energy Rain again, doing another 400 damage to the Sky Wyrm. (Sky Wyrm HP: 1120)

-Venser throws Liquid a Hyper Potion, recovering back 200 HP to him. (Liquid HP: 310)

-A bright yellow portal of energy suddenly appears in front of the dragon. The creature then uses "Mana Breath," causing a blast of shining red light to shoot from its mouth and through the portal, striking Liquid for 400 damage! (Liquid HP: 10)

-Cleiden uses another Silver Potion, recovering back 150 HP to everyone. (Liquid HP: 160, Venser HP: 240, Cleiden HP: 270)

-Liquid cannot use another Energy Rain! He decides to use "Power Cut" instead, which does 350 damage to the dragon. (Sky Wyrm HP: 770)

-The Sky Wyrm uses the attack again where its wings shoot massive beams of energy up into the air, blasting the party for another 150 damage. This time, Liquid is poisoned, Venser falls asleep, and Cleiden is blinded. (Liquid HP: 10, Venser HP: 90, Cleiden HP: 120) 

-Venser skips his turn since he is taking a light snooze.

-Cleiden uses up the party's last Silver Potion, recovering back 150 HP to everyone. (Liquid HP: 160, Venser HP: 240, Cleiden HP: 270)

-The Sky Wyrm takes a step forward and slashes Venser for 150 damage, causing him to wake up. (Venser HP: 90)

-Liquid uses Power Cut on the Sky Wyrm again, doing another 350 damage! (Sky Wyrm HP: 420) Liquid loses 50 HP due to poison. (Liquid HP: 110)

-Venser drinks a Delicious Potion, recovering back 200 HP! (Venser HP: 290)

-The Sky Wyrm begins powering up for its strongest attack (the one that did 400 damage) again.

-Cleiden casts Fire on the dragon, doing 180 damage to it! (Sky Wyrm HP: 240)

-Liquid throws his sentient sword towards the Sky Wyrm, slashing the creature for 300 damage! (Sky Wyrm HP: 0)

EXP GAINED: 265 (Liquid reaches level 14! He distributes his points of experience to Agi + 2, HP + 20, and Str + 3) (Venser reaches level 13! He distributes his points of experience to HP + 60 and Str + 1) (Cleiden reaches level 13! He distributes his points of experience to Mag + 7)

MONEY EARNED: 153 GP

The party regained a defensive position, bracing for the dragon's next attack. That was when suddenly the Sky Wyrm, to the party's immense surprise, began to speak!

"So....you are the one that Sage was waiting for. Very well then. I bid you farewell."

With that, the dragon spread its wings and soared up high into the sky, flying away beyond the distant horizon.

Liquid: Wait, the Sage!? What did the dragon mean by that?

Venser: I knew it. Adrelas did not just send us on this fool's quest to find the second Laturn Scroll - he expected us to go to the Great Cataract instead.

Liquid: But what are we here for?

Cleiden: I don't know. Perhaps you should look into the Great Cataract; you might find something of interest, as we explained to you before.

Liquid nodded and slowly approached the edge of the cataract. Here the roar and sound of the rushing water became so loud that Liquid had to plug his ears in order to hear his own thoughts; water sprayed his face as heavily as if there was a rainstorm, and there seemed to be an aura of dread in the air: a lingering malevolence emanating from the sheer grandeur of the falls. As he came ever closer towards the waterfall, Liquid slowed his pace down to a crawl as each step forward felt like an eternity; there appeared to be some kind of an invisible weight in the air, a mental reparation of instinct perhaps that restrained Liquid's will to move like chains of iron. Soon, just walking forward was a moral quandary for him, and Liquid could not understand why; all that he knew was that the closer he got to the cataract, the greater the weight upon his shoulders became, until he could barely move at all. Perhaps it was the deafening roar of rushing water. Perhaps the sheer size and marvel of the falls made the cataract appear extremely menacing, and that was why Liquid so feared approaching its steep edge. But greater still felt to Liquid the weight of his destiny.

Finally, after he spent nearly an entire minute of deciding whether to advance forward or not, Liquid reached the edge of the cliffs. He fell onto his knees and slowly gazed out over the edge of the falls, over the rushing golden water, over the streaming cloud-like mists, over the cataract's veil of peerless mystery.

Morgas Drigor Adel Ticzith Enuo Mor Rubaen!

The words fell only upon Liquid's ears; no other, despite ringing so loud that it could be heard across the entire planet. Immediately Liquid felt a force reach towards him, a force that was surrounded by an aura so dark and so evil that simply touching it would imbue dread into Liquid's very soul; all hope fell away as he felt his body being hurtled forward, straight towards the grasping 'force', and he saw himself being flung down the cataract and into the endless whirlpool below.

Liquid gasped as he felt something cling to his throat, choking him; he heard an evil laugh in the air, a laugh so menacing and empowering that it seemed to seize and completely destroy, no, obliterate what remnants of hope he had left residing inside his soul. Liquid's eyes were suddenly forced open and he saw himself floating in a pool of darkness, and everything around him was so cold that he felt chilled to the bone. Above him was a spinning portal devoid of all light; it was like a black hole, and of course that meant Liquid could not see it - but he could feel its dreadful presence. He was drifting through a field of nothingness, of enmity and hopelessness, hatred in its purity and evil at its epitome. Nothing here could save him now. Whatever force had just grasped him would prove to be his end.

"Ah! The fated hero of Faerie Heart falls at last, grasped by the hands of darkness, by my hands that hold power beyond his imagining!"

The voice was hoarse and immensely creepy; darkness, which was the only thing that seemed to exist inside this dimension, seethed from the speaker's mouth. Such hatred and venom dripped from the words that Liquid had just heard he could feel the impact of them entering his very soul, and their poison gripped him like an imaginably cold fear that stuck him forever inside a dream of nothing but peerless torture.

"W..h..o....ar..e....y..ou...?" Liquid managed to say.

"I am the one they call Lucirion."

"Lu....ci...rion?" Liquid shuddered, and he became petrified.

"Yes. I am the other half of Drakmus. The undead half."

"D-ddrakmus? H..e...h..a.s......a-a-an..oth...e..r.......h-half?"

"Listen well, mortal, and perhaps you shall understand my story.

A cold chill began to enter his body, and Liquid felt an icy hand grip his heart. All of a sudden he could hardly breathe. Curling up into a fetal position, Liquid began to gasp for air - and there was none inside this dimension; every single part of his body shuddered uncontrollably.

"Twenty thousand years ago, there lived four tyrants on Earth who sought the power of immortality. They had each acquired the sixth sense and wished to use it to defy Fate in the ultimate way possible."

"T-t-th..e.....s-s..ix..th....s..ens..e.....?"

"Yes. A human who has the sixth sense can see past the false veils of knowledge Fate enforces upon the limited sights of mortals in this world. These four tyrants abused their power, and in time became bloodthirsty torturers who slaughtered millions in their attempt to gain immortality. But one day, they were tricked by a clever magician, and three of these tyrants' souls were sealed away inside scrolls of power now known as the Laturn Scrolls. But the fourth one escaped. He cast a spell, a spell of fire, that went horribly wrong and half of his body became completely burned down. All his memory was lost, and he became a creature known as Drakmus, a vile and pitiful being who at all times walks upon both planes of existences.

Drakmus, the half-dead creature who is immortal. Ah, what irony. The fourth of the tyrants received what he ever quested for after all. And I am his other half, the part of him that was burned and sent into the spirit world. I am Lucirion.

Drakmus wandered the world like an animal, despising all humans for he did not understand why they hated him, for he did not remember that he was once a tyrant. Only I remember that. But one day his hatred grew enough, reaching a certain point in which he used his dark magic to enter the Spirit World and contact me. I....told him of what he must do. It is simple: collect the hearts of planets, such as Faerie Heart, which is the heart of Earth. Only when he has all one thousand hearts assembled together may the Waystone be constructed again, and the entrance into the Lumien Crystal shall be born anew - and then Fate will fall!

"F-f-fa..te....? T-t-he Wa..y..sto..n.e? L..um..ien C-c-ry..s..ta..l?"

"That is not important to you, for your journey ends now, here in this realm of death. Faerie Heart has lost its last hope. They....your friends, they did not know that the Great Cataract was a portal into the Spirit World which I could use to steal and destroy you! Farewell, Liquid! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

That was when suddenly a wave of bright, endearing light washed over the darkness and Liquid could feel himself being brought out of the pool of enmity and into a place of hope. The darkness, that 'Lucirion' creature was immediately swept away, and a warm hand, a beacon of hope radiating with holy power, reached down to guide Liquid out of the evil pit.

He found himself staring into the face of Sage.

Kwiftee: Ah, Liquid. I'm glad I came just in time to save you before the darkness consumed your entire body.

Liquid: W-what....what happened to me!?

Sage: Lucirion is indeed Drakmus's other half, the one that resides within the 'Cleft World' (a part of the Spirit World) and who controls Drakmus. He...told you of his past, didn't he?

Liquid: Yes.

Sage: Then you know about the four tyrants and the Laturn Scrolls. Well, then, there is no reason to hide it from you anymore.

Liquid: Hide what?

Sage: The scrolls and the fate of this world. Faerie Heart has not much long to live, even if Drakmus is defeated.

Liquid: What...what do you mean!?

Sage: Hmmm. Perhaps this conversation should wait until your friends are all here. Venser and Cleiden are waiting, and they are both quite worried.

Liquid: Wait...where am I, anyways?

Sage: You are in a dream. In fact, your whole conversation with Lucirion was actually a dream. But...sometimes, dreams can be frightfully real, especially if you can't wake up from it. I must prevent him from being able to speak to you again.

Liquid: How?

Sage: The sixth sense. He (as in Lucirion) has already told you about it. When one acquires the sixth sense they are able to see through reality's indoctrination - our "paradigms", I mean - and view all knowledge in its purity.

Liquid: I don't get it.

Sage: You will soon.

The Sage suddenly put his hand upon Liquid's forehead, and began to imbue his power into him.

"Long ago, people - and only the greatest magicians - would acquire the power of the sixth sense through meditation. By expanding their mind past the limits imposed upon them by their five senses and their understanding of this shortsighted reality, they could become more and more powerful until finally this sixth sense became activated within the hidden depths of their minds."

Liquid gains a level, reaching level 15. He distributes his points of experience to HP + 70.

"There is another way, however, to acquire the sixth sense, a simpler way. And that is by the passing of the power of one who already has the sixth sense into a person who does not."

Liquid gains another level, reaching level 16. He distributes his points of experience to HP + 70.

"I, Liquid, am one of the six people on Faerie Heart who possesses this sixth sense. The others are King Kayin, King Adrelas, Mayor Yule of Resa Town, King Evan, and King Mordra."

Liquid gains another level, reaching level 17. He distributes his points of experience to HP + 60, Str + 1.

"Long ago, people who acquired the sixth sense could choose what they want to do with it. They could either stick to their destinies, their purpose in life as had already been assigned to them by Fate before they were born, or just defy it entirely."

Liquid gains another level, reaching level 18. He distributes his points of experience to Str + 7.

"Some, as the four tyrants did, chose to use the sixth sense for evil purposes, and they caused much suffering in doing so. Liquid, when I give you the sixth sense you will understand the truth of Faerie Heart, and you too will be free of the purpose that Fate had given you upon your birth. You will be able to choose your own destiny for yourself....and I will not be able to deter you from this new path."

Liquid gains a final level, reaching level 19. Upon reaching level 19, up to ten points of experience can be distributed to his stats per level. Liquid distributes his points of experience to Str + 5, Agi + 5.

Liquid also gains a new ability since he passed level 16. This one is called "Flame Shock," which once again deals more damage than his previously learned ability, X-Strike.

"Now, you have the sixth sense, Liquid. Lucirion can no longer contact you to harm you. Use its power well...."

Upon opening up his eyes, Liquid found himself staring up at the night sky, and he was lying on the ground back beside the roaring waters of the Great Cataract. Venser and Cleiden were seated beside him, staring down at his face.

Cleiden: You're back! Liquid, what happened? You just fell unconscious there for a few minutes!

Liquid: A few minutes...? It felt to me like several hours...

Venser: Probably because you were asleep. I really don't think looking into the Great Cataract was such a great idea anymore, Liquid. Let's get going: we're going to head to the Sage dwelling through the portal in the forest east of here next.

Liquid stood up and brushed some grass and soil off of himself. He blinked a bit and noticed that there was now something different about his surroundings.

With the sixth sense, he could see the purpose of everything around him, from something as small as a blade of grass to something as large as the existence of a star. And his own purpose?

Why.....

Why was Liquid's own purpose to defy Fate himself?

***

[Neko Desu]

So I started playing FFXIII last Thursday, will use this topic to blog it. Obviously, expect spoilerz.

First impressions: wait, this is a Final Fantasy? So there was this train running on a highway through some mountains, and inside are all these people dressed up in gray robes, making them look like prisoners (which they are, I believe). One of them is a girl with red hair, named Lightning, who all of a sudden goes batshit on the guards (the Cocoon droids or something) with an awesome we-we-wep-weapon-

Her weapon is a gunblade. Didn't Spoony already rant about this? Yeah, I thought that Squall's weapon from FF8 was a bit ridiculous. However, in this game it makes a bit more sense because of the high-technology environment, not to mention Lightning kicks far more ass with her gunblade than -

NEVERMIND, Lionheart from FF8.

So anyways, Lightning beats up all the guards and the train crashes on some highway inside a huge green city. Scorpion mech comes out of nowhere, and Lightning and a Black guy named Sazh goes to fight it. The battle mechanics were a bit boring in this first battle because all you could really do was attack. The battle system in this game is very fast-paced - and that's one of the reasons why I don't really like it. In FFX, everything was turn-based so I had absolute control over what was going on with my characters. In the first battle of this game, you can only control Lightning, and all she can really do is attack or use a move called "Blitz" which isn't too effective.

I hate how damage in this game appears in the form of a chain of numbers. When Lightning strikes an enemy, the damage is like "10, 50, 100, 20" or something impossible to calculate because of how quickly the numbers flash by. In every other FF, if you hit an enemy, the damage was a definite number.

Sazh and Lightning pwn the Scorpion Mech and continue running on the highway, killing more and more droids along the way. What is this, Star Wars? Well, at least some of the enemies look original - if not a bit too mechanical. I mean, almost every enemy in this game looks like a machine.

Then we switch to Snow, some blond guy who acts like a bigot with his "Oooh, I'm the hero!" speeches. Reminds me of Zell, what with his punching and all. I already hate him. So, he's leading a resistance faction against the "government" and all these droids are coming after him. There's these two kids whose names are Hope and Vanille; their mom dies and Snow becomes all emo, but they all make it to the giant Fal'cii palace or something at the end of the highway.

So, Lightning is out to save her sister, Sarah, who is apparently a l'Cie - a person who is marked by the Fal'cii to complete a certain purpose. If they fail, THEY TURN INTO CRYSTAL - OLOLOLOLOLOLOL. Snow wants to save Sarah too since he's her boyfriend or something (apparently they were already supposed to be married...) Meanwhile, Hope and Vanille steal some flying device which they use to fly into the tower so that they can....uh, I dunno, cause some trouble? Well, Vanille is some happy-go-lucky girl (the Yuffie / Rikku of this game) who likes to go "Oooh, ah!" at everything she sees while Hope is like the Sephiroth of this game - he's all emo and stuff and has white hair and gets angry at everything. I can already sense the yaoi fanfics that are literally teeming out of his existence.

The five people unite together just in time to see Sarah turned to crystal. Snow, who is apparently very optimistic, tries to free her while Lightning....punches him in the face for it?

Uh...

Yes, Lightning is like the "Cloud" of this game (that explains why she's the main character). Anyways, the party confronts the Fal'cii, this giant machine-type thing, and they manage to "destroy" it when suddenly the guards arrive to totally blow the place up. That's when the Fal'cii marks them all with that weird symbol and gives them all a purpose, but doesn't tell them what it is. I find that particularly spiteful; that machine-god is such an ass. "HEY GUYS, IMMA GONNA GIVE YOU ALL A PURPOSE - AND IF YOU DON'T COMPLETE IT, HAVE FUN SPENDING THE REST OF YOUR LIVES AS A STATUE! OH BTW YOU HAVE TO GO FIGURE OUT WHAT THIS PURPOSE IS OLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL"

So, we get a pretty long movie sequence that shows a bit of Snow and Sarah's past and how they were supposed to be married to each other and stuff. Sarah acts really whiny in this movie, as if she was some typical can't-stand-up-for-yourself damsel in distress, while Snow shows off more bigotry.

The entire lake below the Fal'cii tower has turned to ice and the party gains magical abilities from their l'cie markings. Lightning continues to act condescending, Snow continues to be optimistic, Vanille continues to be annoying, Sazh is still the "go-with-the-flow" type of character, and Hope succumbs into emofaggotry. Anyways, we explore the lake until we find Sarah's crystal statue. Snow decides to stay behind to try to free Sarah from the statue (a pretty meaningless task), while some giant mech boss comes along to try to PWN you or something.

Oh, and we also get introduced to paradigms. Basically, we start off with two simple ones: offensive, or defensive. In offensive mode, your characters launch an all-out attack upon the enemy with spells or physical attacks; in defensive mode, they stay behind and heal. This allows you to at least assume some control over your other party members' actions....but no, I don't think this really does it for me. In FFXII, you almost had complete control over your other party members even if you set gambits for them. In this game....well, even when you're using paradigms, you can still only control Lightning.

Also the Crystarium level up system feels too....limited. Really, you can only level up your characters' "roles" that they fulfill within a certain paradigm. I prefer the Sphere Grid system in FFX where everyone was on a set path specifically designed to give them their own unique traits and stats. Also, in this game, you don't get experience points - you gain CP after a battle! Yes, I'm serious. You need CP to level up in this game.

CP. And you get tons of it after every battle. FFXIII must be /b/'s favourite game!

So we destroy this mechbot, Snow leaves the party after Lightning beats him up, and we continue exploring the rest of the lake. Eventually, after about an hour of dungeon crawling, we reach some fortress and we fight the Garuda Inceptor, who uses a barrier halfway through the battle to make everything worse for you. After you defeat him, we discover an airship, I believe, and then the game goes back to Snow, who just - LOL - got ambushed by guards!

He summons an Eidolon for some reason and it's Shiva, who totally destroys those guards. Anyways I haven't defeated Shiva yet because I can never punch her enough to make that damage gauge even a quarter full before the timer ends so FFXIII will be sitting on my shelf for a while.

7 / 10 game 

I'm going to start writing another real world-fantasy crossover story called "The Sun Mirror of the Prism World". It will deal with themes of homosexuality, but not in a slash type of way

Ciao!

[Neko Desu]

Are there any two player Mario hacks out there?

[Neko Desu]

FH ON HIATUS

Also, get ready for quintuple post.

The Sun Mirror of the Prism World

Side story to Faerie Heart. I'm planning it to be about 23 chapters long.

Prologue

On his birthday, six-year-old Milo Carmen was visited by his grandfather, an eccentric old man and seasoned war veteran who happened to be on his last legs. He was a great story teller with a vast imagination, although many considered him to be crazy because sometimes, the old man seemed to seriously believe his tall tales. Nevertheless, Milo loved hearing his grandfather talk and engulf him into a world of myth and fantasy and epic legends.

Milo's grandfather had a present to give him when he turned six. Being a rich child of a wealthy family, he generally received very grand gifts from all his relatives and friends - but the one that his grandfather gave him was a bit peculiar. When the boy opened up his present, he found a small object inside - no bigger than the size of an apple - and it was shaped as a perfectly symmetrical pentagonal prism, glimmering white like the colour of diamonds and it was also very light. At night Milo went to ask his grandfather what this thing was, and the old man suddenly turned very grave. It was once again story time, but the tale that he told was a bit different this time. It seemed more like Milo's grandfather was giving the boy some instructions.

"There are some things in this world that we just can't explain. Many times, when we try to explain it, it just doesn't make sense, nor do many people believe it. By that I mean many of the stories that I've told you. Some are not completely untrue."

"I don't want it. How is this....box, a toy?" Milo asked.

"No! Not a toy. More like...a heritage." The grandfather grabbed the toy and held it in his hands, scrutinizing it very carefully. He then handed it back to the boy.

"Inside this box is a whole 'nother world. It is in fact, magical."

"Mother says magic doesn't exist," Milo replied.

"Some people don't know any better. But there are certain dimensions inside this universe that exist outside of our realm of comprehension, and one of these dimensions is called....I believe it was Faerie Heart.

Actually I prefer to just call it Prism World since the entire damn world is sealed inside this one tiny box. Let me tell you how I found the thing: it was during the war. Yes, I fought in World War Two, remember, during the Dieppe raid? It was a devastating battle upon France's northern beaches. But that isn't important. I found this box, this tiny little box of treasures, just lying on the battered field during the battle. And when I touched it, and made a wish to "Get me the hell outta here," I suddenly went 'Poof!' and was gone. I know, hard to believe, right? I found myself in another world. And I spent several months in that world, but in the real world, only hours passed by. And when I finally came back from Faerie Heart, the battle was already over, for we had lost and our British commanders were calling the retreat. I was a lucky survivor of that hellstorm."

Milo nodded. "Really? Is this true?"

"True? Every story is true. It's all in the head, my boy. But someday, I believe this box might serve you well. 'Course, it didn't work on your father, though. But since its magic worked on me....I believe that it should be passed onto you. I'm not long for this world, but this little....prism, here, it's my favourite object, my one true inheritance. Take it!"

"How do I use it?" Milo asked.

"Don't you dare! Not yet, at least. You're too young for battles and to head into fantasy worlds where danger and peril lurks at every corner. But maybe when you're older....I was...hmm, seventeen, I believe, when I used this box.

Okay, let me tell you how to use it. You touch the box and make a wish to get out of reality and into the magical world sealed inside. Might not work instantaneously, but just wait a while, trust me. Oh, and you can bring one person with you into Faerie Heart. Just say that person's name out loud when you make that wish, and it'll come true. Haha, my old friend Henry was the one who I accidentally whisked away into that damn box."

Milo laughed a little and then ran out of the room with the box to hide it. He actually didn't believe a word of what his grandfather said. Another world, sealed inside a tiny little prism? Impossible!

~

14-year old Milo Carmen (most people actually prefer to call him by his last name rather than the first, so that's the one I'll be using from now) stormed into his room and slammed the door shut behind him. He dropped down on his bed and gazed with apprehension upon the large beige piece of paper that he held in his hands.

"How..." he muttered to himself. "Just h-how did I...."

Carmen slowly traced his index finger over the letters written on the page, the letters spelling out the words and numbers that would lead to his imminent doom.

"A...70%!? In chemistry? And 60% in math!?"

......

As a relatively rich (and somewhat spoiled child), Carmen's parents had sent him to the best private schools in the country at a very early age and demanded the best out of him, especially in his studies. The grades that he had scored on his recent exams, specifically in science and math, were below the average and would certainly not impress his folks. He would likely be grounded for months - just because he didn't study hard enough for those year-end tests - and he definitely wouldn't be able to return to Europe this summer to visit his relatives.

Dammit... Carmen thought to himself. "Dammit. Damn, damn, damn!" My parents are definitely going to kill me for this! Damn it all!
 
He looked at the clock placed on the wall opposite the bed in his room. 4:30, it said. Still have an hour of time left before parents come home, Carmen thought. An hour left to live. That's 60 minutes, and 3600 seconds. 1 / 24 of a day....

"No, no no!" He grabbed his report card and hid it under his pillow (yeah, lame hiding spot), hoping that he would never have to take it out again. Shit. This is bad. I'll never hear the end of it from my parents. I failed my exams! How could I!? I studied so hard for them!

"F-

He opened up the closet that lay beside his bed and took out the shining white diamond, the one present that his grandfather had given him before he died and that Carmen had kept in his room all these years. He held it up in his hands and gazed at its wondrous beauty - its perfectly marked edges and vertices, its mirror-like surface that reflected a whole bunch of bright colours....oh, and, let's not forget the 'Curse' that his grandfather talked about.

You know, the curse. Yeah, that one, that blatant lie - the bad fairytale that my grandfather told me on my sixth birthday. Why do I even remember it? That happened seven years ago. Hmmm...a curse, is it? Or was it a spell?

Carmen laughed it off. What am I thinking!? There's no such thing as magic in this world, and there never will be? Why am I thinking such things? Why am I believing....

Hmmm, belief.

No, no, no! Perish those thoughts. There's no such thing as magic or curses....

Well, it would certainly get me out of this situation that I'm currently in....

What the hell!? There are no curses or magic or whatever shit I used to believe in! Carmen laid the diamond down on the table beside his bed. He grabbed it seconds later and eyed it very closely this time.

There are no such things as curses....

No such thing as magic, or wishes....

Hmmm, wishes? Where did that come from? Well, no matter. Magic doesn't work. So this prism-thingy....won't take me anywhere, right? Right?

Shit! Anywhere is better than this place! I want to get out of here! I don't want to show my parents my report card! I...

Carmen sighed in frustrating. He was arguing with himself. A mental debate that took place somewhere far away, like the land known as Faerie Heart, or the magical little place of imagination inside his mind...

No! Faerie Heart? Where did that name come from? Was it...the world sealed inside this prism? Hmmmm...

Oh, whatever! I know magic and curses don't exist, so why bother thinking about it? But then again, it is really tempting. A way to get out of here, an escape from reality.....

Yeah, no: not happening.

But really tempting. Okay, just one wish. I know it's not going to work, but....

I wish I could get out of this place. Out of this room, at least. Far away from where my parents will be. Okay?

Nothing happened. Carmen laughed to himself and sat down upon his bed, placing the diamond-prism aside.

See, it didn't work! I was write! Magic is all bullshit! It's all....

Wait, didn't grandpa say that I could pick someone to come with me to Prism World? Well, yeah, for sure. I wouldn't want to be stuck alone-

Stop this nonsense! Magic doesn't exist!

inside a really faraway and dangerous fantasy world, would I? Now, who to choose?

Stop trying to believe that all this is real and that something magical is going to happen!

Oh, it would be Eikan, of course. He's....a good friend, I guess.

Shut up! Magic doesn't work! Stop this foolishness!

Wouldn't that be great? Eikan and I, stuck inside a faraway world, 'Prism World' I believe it was called. Oh, how I wish it would actually happen, because -

And with that, Carmen was gone.

~

The honourable magician Kwiftee, sage-master of Faerie Heart and the official archwizard of Demean's mainland alliance*, stood solemnly in the garden of his dwelling, awaiting the arrival of a chosen few after a perilous ordeal with the Nightmare Riders.

He saw two star-like shapes twinkling out in the night sky, zooming very fast past the mountains and over the distant oceans in the east.

"Oh. The second one has arrived. Not to this land, though. Probably prism world, I believe." He smiled and disappeared.

*Faerie Heart is split into three continents. Of these three, Liquid's story takes place on the mainland continent, in the south; Prism world to the northeast, and in the far west, the major land continent of Andalia, unexplored.

***   

[Neko Desu]

Chapter I

Map of Faerie Heart - the Prism World continent.

*Note: the story in Liquid's Faerie Heart occurs on another continent, directly south of this one.

*Note II: This story will contain a lot of homosexuality. You have been warned.

A tap upon his shoulder made Carmen burst out of his dreams - and a rather nasty one he was experiencing currently, about a 'whip' in regards to his recent report card - and into reality, where the bright morning sunlight made the vision within his eyelids grow a fiery red. Carmen opened up his eyes to gaze upon - quite surprisingly - the pretty face of a certain boy who he had a tiny crush on (Carmen was bisexual, but leaning towards the 'homosexual' end of the spectrum) at school.

"Eikan? What are you doing here?" Carmen said sleepily. He felt like he had been asleep forever. Now that he thought about it, why was he sleeping anyways? Wasn't he just in his room, fussing out about this report card.....?

"Ummmm...."

Carmen sat up to find himself resting upon soft grass. He looked about him and saw tall green trees of oak, ash, elm, and beech (mainly), and realized that he was sitting in a clearing of sorts in some forest. The cloudless sky above him was a beautiful blue, with the sun shining brightly as it made its ascent up past the distant mountains to the west, illuminating the wild and vast world below. There was nothing but nature around him. No houses, no towns, no cities, nor anything reminiscent of the civilized places back on Earth. Nothing but the wild: of forests, and streaming rivers and lush valleys and rocky mountains, as well as swamps and caves and deserts and much more of the grandeur of Faerie Heart.

"Where the hell....

Carmen jumped up and looked at his friend's face, who was just as perplexed as his. Eikan had pale skin, black hair, and dark eyes as well as a high-cheeked face; currently he wore a yellow plaid shirt and blue jeans. Carmen meanwhile had light brown hair and grayish-green eyes, he wore a white t-shirt and dark blue shorts.

These are the clothes they'll be wearing for the rest of the story, RPG-style.

"What....how...where is this place!?" Carmen managed to gasp. "What....Eikan, what are you doing here!?"

The other boy didn't really talk much. Eikan was confused, too, but he simply shrugged.

Carmen suddenly remembered about a certain prism that he had been holding in his hands when he made that wish. He quickly looked at his hands right now and realized that it was no longer there.

Oh, crap!! What did I just get my self into!? What did I.....wait, was what my grandpa said....real? Was that prism really magical? How - wait, what? How can it be real? How - how was doing anything like that possible? How was making a wish-

Damn, damn, damn! That wish!

What the hell? A wish? Magic?

Carmen sighed and plopped back down to the floor. "Eikan, where are we!?" He said.

"I have no idea," the other boy replied. "Ummm, what are you doing here?"

"That's what I like to know. But more importantly I want to know how we got here, and how we're going to get back home. This is too weird."

"How did we get here?"

Carmen looked around. "I don't know. Nothing but plains and forests all around us. It's too...far away from civilization, I would guess. And there are mountains in the distance! Mountains! Just...where are we?"

The boy jumped up again in frustration. It can't be..... he thought to himself. It just can't. Magic isn't real, dammit. Get that through your head. It's not real...not real....not real....

THEN WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING OUT HERE!? AND HOW DID I FALL ASLEEP IN THE FIRST PLACE!?

"Eikan...what were you doing before you ended up...here? Were you asleep?"

"Umm...I think I was...on my computer. I don't remember sleeping. I just simply woke up here in this place. And you were lying beside me."

"Oh...I see." Carmen responded. Him, too, I guess. Poor kid. Accidentally got dragged into this whole mess because of my tardiness. Damn it! That prism - it's nothing but trouble. MAGIC. DOESN'T. EXIST!!!!!

"Okay, calm down," Carmen said. "Let's find a way out of here."

"How?" Eikan replied condescendingly. "Where are we?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out!" Carmen said. He hated being this angry. This angry at....

The person...he had a crush on? How weird, it seemed.

Eikan wasn't exactly Carmen's friend. Just a really nice, quiet guy from school that he got along with in Chemistry class, who was also - ugh - a lot....smarter than him. Carmen just didn't work hard enough to get the same grades, but seriously, who cares about grades when they were stuck in a situation like this!?

Carmen turned his head to look at Eikan. Okay, so his "friend" here was...'pretty,' and Carmen basically knew - and had dealt with the fact - that he was quite homosexual and thus would find an attraction to people of the same gender. But this guy?

Eikan was kind of antisocial at times. NO MATTER....

"Still, we can't just stay here. I think someone must've like....I don't know, brought us here or something. Actually, I don't really care. Let's just find a way back home."

Carmen started walking northwards, and soon found himself standing in front of a huge veil of trees that consisted a large portion of the surrounding forest. To the west; same thing. East; more forest. South? Back where they came from, and then MORE forest.

"Carmen...where are you going?" Eikan asked.

"I don't know. Somewhere. Just...out of here, I guess."

"Why would you go in the forest? It might be dangerous."

"Well, I don't really care where we are right now. We might as well...find a way out of here..."

He turned around. "Just stay close to me, okay?"

Carmen continued ahead into the forest while Eikan followed closely behind. They found themselves arriving deep into the woods soon later, where there were hardly any visible paths and the mossy ground was strewn about with red, brown, and green leaves.

"Do you really know where you're going?" Eikan asked a minute after they entered the forest.

"I am going somewhere, and that's all I need to know. I'm not even really that confident, but it's better than doing nothing."

"Yeah, but it's a forest. Where would there even be a forest near our town, anyways? This place looks pretty far away."

"And it is," Carmen muttered to himself. Dammit. Why did I do this? Why did I make that wish? I want to just go back home. Home, to where I'm safe, even if I do have to show my parents my report card. Better than being out here....

As they headed deeper into the forest, the two boys found themselves slowly heading up a hill and soon into another clearing - this one was more of a glade - a grassy, lavender-filled meadow situated on an escarpment inside the forest, and here their view (when it wasn't surrounded by trees) was better. Carmen climbed first to the top of the hill, and then observed the scenery around him; to his disappointment he saw nothing but just more and more forest. To the far south, however, there were also a lot of plains; northwards, a lake; and there were mountains bordering them to the east and the west. The mountains to the west looked a lot closer, but they were very tall and mighty, with peaks capped in snow and shrouded by distant clouds.

Eikan sat down on a small boulder inside this glade and sighed. Carmen approached him - as much as he hated his current situation, Carmen could not relinquish the annoying disease known as "love" (or, in this case, was it simply lust?) that plagued his mind and made him feel attracted (and thus, unnaturally sympathetic) towards his crush.

"Ummm, Eikan? Are you feeling well?"

"Of course not. We're stuck in the middle of nowhere, and I have no idea how we got here, or...what you're doing here right now, either."

"Yeah. Weird, isn't it? It's only us two."

"Really weird."

Carmen said down upon the dry grass. He slowly picked at a flower, one with bright yellow petals, that lay apathetically beside him. He plucked it from its stem and threw it away in frustration.   

"Man! This is really weird. Just what - how did we get here? I'd like to find some answers, but staying here won't help."

"So what do you want to do now?"

"I don't know. But we have to find our way home...getting stuck out here in the wilderness won't do anything."

"But home is probably really far away from here. We're just....stranded right now, and we have no idea how it got like this."

"I know. This is a terrible day. Well, yesterday was a terrible day too. Do you know what I got on my report card?"

"Huh?"

"Oh, nevermind. Ummmm, 70% in chemistry. Yeah. My parents are going to kill me. But honestly, I'd rather have them kill me now, rather than be stuck out here in god-knows-where."

Dammit! I'm talking too much!

"I see. Well...."

A cool breeze blew by them, ruffling the tall meadow grass as well as the trees of the distant forest. The skies, before blue, became slightly shaded by fluffy white clouds. The sun was still shining as brightly as ever, and it was quite a warm day; the weather was rather mild.

"We should get going now."

"Where? There's no place to go out here."

"Better than sitting around waiting for something to happen. Don't be so pessimistic!"

Eikan looked at Carmen quite strangely. The boy had many strange looks, actually, and you could hardly tell what he was thinking about at any given time. He rarely smiled and never talked positively of things.

"Let's get off this hill and continue north, okay? Like, maybe until we reach the lake?"

They descended down the hill and re-entered the forest. It was not much different in this place than before, but here was when Carmen began to notice something strange, specifically regarding the trees inside the forest. He noticed that as he proceeded deeper and deeper into the woods, not only did it become darker, but also the shadows cast from the sunlight streaming through the trees became.....bluer? The shade certainly wasn't bright yellow, like normal sunlight, or orange or white or even black; upon closer inspection of a fallen tree's leaves Carmen realized that many of them were stripped with blue veins, a phenomenon he did not recall at all to be possible back on Earth, or wherever his "home" was. That was not to say the trees here were completely blue, but that they simply cast strange, bluish shadows, as if they were somehow...magic.

Also, why did half of the trees have yellow and red leaves, as if they were in autumn, while the rest - and no, there was not a single evergreen in sight - all had green leaves, as if they were in summer? What a strange forest. It definitely seemed to be from some other world, which meant that home would be nowhere near even possible to reach.

What a depressing thought. I'd rather be home than with Eikan inside this place, actually. Even if he is really....

Carmen turned around to look at Eikan, who was walking slowly and trying to catch up. He simply stared at his "crush" for a few seconds. What a lustful, one-sided relationship. Carmen almost hated himself for it; love was so troublesome.

"What?" Eikan asked.

"Take a look at the trees inside the forest. Some are red, some are yellow, some are green, and most seem to have some shade of blue."

"Ummm...so?"

"So? That's really weird! Many have blue leaves, even. Or well, they're almost blue. But seriously, this just doesn't seem like a normal forest. Too bizarre, in my opinion."

"I guess so....."

Goddammit, Eikan! Carmen thought, almost saying it out loud. Show some emotion, please! Don't you find stuff like this interesting?

They continued onwards, mostly in silence as they tried to find their way out of the place. They began turning westwards, and here the forest became a bit denser - the trees were larger and more thick. Also, most of them had red leaves now and few were green. When Carmen observed the orange leaf of an oak, he saw that they were also streamed with blue veins.

Soon, the sun began to go down, and the skies - or at least, what they could see of the sky through the leaf-veiled ceiling - became gray, then blue, and then a very dark blue. Dusk had set, and it was almost pitch black inside the forest. Now Carmen was beginning to get anxious, wondering if it had really been such a good idea after all to walk off into the woods like that. Eikan still seemed okay, but no one can really tell what was going on inside his mind.
   
"Eikan. Do you think we should rest?"

"In this place? Well...isn't it kind of dark? And unsafe?"

"I know. I'm sorry....I guess it was my fault for going into this forest instead of staying up on that hill." It was also my fault for making that wish, too....

"Well, this place is kind of-"

The cold howling of wolves off in the distance interrupted Eikan as the sun nearly completed its descent past the line of trees just up ahead. Although the skies were a dark blue, in the remote horizon there were still various shades of maroon, purple, and pink shrouding the disappearing twilight. The howls chilled Carmen to the bone and made him freeze suddenly in fear; wolves! Out here in this forest! And what else - what other dangerous animals will he find?

"Eikan!" Carmen yelled as he ran towards his friend. "Did you hear that? Wolves! We're definitely not safe out here."

"I know! Where do we go now?"

"I don't know. Hide or something."

There came an answering howl, and then another one, and another. Carmen and Eikan immediately ran off towards a grove of trees, hoping that its thick, knotted branches would hide them from sight of any prowling animals. More howls came, along with the hooting of howls; a few birds still tweeted, and crickets chirped in the humid evening air. Night time was nigh, and it was definitely not good to spend inside this forest.

*

[Neko Desu]

(Continued from the previous post)

"Get...me...outta...here..." Carmen whispered to himself. "Away from those wolves. Those dangerous animals, or whatever else is lurking inside this forest. Away, please. Why won't you listen to my wish now, prism?"

Prism. What a strange word. Never expected an object like that to have any magical powers, either.

"Ei-Eikan. Are you scared?" Carmen asked as the howls became closer and closer. Something seemed to be rustling the leaves, and it was not the wind. This rustling came from the ground. The sound of approaching footsteps.

"Yeah..."

"Don't move. I think something is coming towards us."

Carmen held his breath as he stooped down low, crouching almost, behind the tree grove. Yes, he could certainly hear those footsteps - and they were approaching fast. They weren't light footsteps - no, not at all, so it can't be a rodent. Probably a large animal, like a wolf. Definitely a wolf. 

Letting go of his breath for one second, and then immediately drawing another one, Carmen closed his eyes and began....."wishing." Listen to me now, you.....'Prism,' or whatever mechanism brought me to this damned place. Get me out of here. Now. Out. Out. Out. Please!

It didn't work. Carmen opened up his eyes and found himself still inside the dark forest, still sitting behind those trees, still accompanied by Eikan, still being approached by the wolves, still...

They came. Carmen jumped up when he saw a prowling gray fur-covered figure off in the distance. It was on all four feet and had sharp pointed ears, yes: the wolf was here, it had come looking for food, and it had smelled their fear. Behind the wolf were two others; all of them hungry and probably couldn't wait to pounce upon them and tear apart their flesh.

"Run!" Carmen whispered to Eikan. He quickly darted across the tree grove, hiding behind one tree after another, until about a minute later he realized that Eikan was not beside him. The other boy had stayed behind, too frightened and not daring to run, and because of the noises that Carmen had made while running, the wolves had noticed him. But they were not advancing towards the running one, instead they came towards Eikan, who was hiding behind the trees they were at before. The boy slowly backed away as the wolves stepped closer; the one in front, who was leading the pack, bared his fangs and it looked hungry.

Eikan looked terrified. Before, he had hardly showed any emotion upon his face; now, he looked like he was about to cry. Immediately, an overwhelming amount of guilt overtook Carmen, for he realized that it was he who had made the wish and brought them both to this despairing place, and that now, it was because of him that they both might die and become a meal for the wolves. Furthermore, Carmen could not forget the fact that he secretly loved Eikan, and that he just would not allow his friend to perish. These emotions began to build up inside him, until he simply could not contain them any longer, and then....

There was suddenly a very loud explosion, and then a burst of light consumed the forest. A shining white flare struck the space in front of Eikan, causing a fire to appear which temporarily blocked off the wolves' passage forward. Not caring where that fire came from, or how it happened, Eikan immediately fled past the trees towards where Carmen stood, while the wolves began trying to find another way to pursue them. Carmen had a very ecstatic look upon his face; meanwhile the fire went out immediately.

"D-d-d-did you....did you see that!? Did you see the fire!?" Carmen yelled. "I....I-how did it happened? How...h-h-how did I make it happen?"

"What!? You mean you caused the fire?"

"With my mind, I did! I was getting angry at the wolves, and I was terrified when they approached you, and then, all of a sudden - BOOM! It was like some internal mechanism in my mind, one that controls reality or something, just simply clicked and I could instantly cause fires at will. I cannot believe it! It's...it's-it's like, magic!"

"Carmen, what are you saying!? You can't-you can't just cause a fire with your mind like that!"

"I'll show it to you again! Watch!" Carmen raised his hand towards a tree, and seconds later, one of its leaves caught on fire. "This one's a lot smaller, because I don't have much energy left, but...it works."

"I can't believe it! You....is that magic or something? What's going on!?

"I have no idea! But let's get the hell outta here!"

The two boys began running westwards, while the pursuing footsteps of the wolves could be heard just behind them. Eventually they seemed to cross into another clearing, and this one had very tall grasses that reached up to their knees; either way, the wolves had caught up with them and they were now extremely impatient with their prey.

"Ummmm, Carmen, if you can really just cause fires like that, another one would be really useful right about now!"

"I can't, for some reason. It's just not working for me anymore! I'm too tired or something!"

"Damn! I hope you weren't lying to me!" The two slowly backed away as the wolves approached closer. The one in front looked just about ready to pounce.

"Uh, uh!" Carmen looked around him, trying to find a way out of their current situation. When he suddenly noticed something: there was a rock nearby, but it was...floating up in the air for some reason! 

"Eikan! What's that rock doing there - why is it floating!?"

"Ummmm-" Eikan suddenly blinked as he realized just what he was doing. His left hand was outstretched, and the rock was floating right in front of him. His hand was magically controlling the rock!

Without thinking, Eikan thrust his hand out towards the wolves, which in turn, caused the rock to fly towards the one leading the pack. It struck the creature in the eye, and it fell down unconscious.

"Uh, do you have telekinesis or something? How did you move that rock?"

"I don't know. How did you start a fire?"

"This is just really weird, okay? But, umm, what are you going to do about the rest of the wolves?"

"Well, running's no good....

Eikan lifted up another rock just when the other three wolves charged forward, preparing to pounce. He struck one in the eye (again), while Carmen tried to cast another spell - surprisingly, he succeeded, and a massive burst of fire consumed the remaining two wolves. It immediately went out before it could burn down the forest.

"Okay, what was that!?" Carmen yelled as he fell to the floor, gasping for breath. "So I can create fires now, and you can use telekinesis to lift rocks!?"

"I don't know, but right now I'm just too tired - and hungry, and thirsty - to think about it. Whatever we just did, I'll think about it once I get some rest. Okay?"

They plopped down onto the floor of the clearing and immediately fell asleep.

***

[Neko Desu]

Chapter II

Carmen was woken up from his dreams by another tap upon his shoulder. He opened up his eyes and saw the face of Eikan once again staring down at him, and sighed as he realized that he was still stuck inside this place, this accursed forest, instead of being home where he could be sleeping on his soft, comfy bed.

As Carmen stood up, he stretched and suddenly felt a despairing emptiness inside his stomach. Hunger. Also, his lips were parched and he desperately needed some water.

"Eikan, I'm hungry. Do you have some food or water or anything around here?"

"No. But, look at how far we ran last night. We seem to have gotten mostly out of the forest - and now we're at the base of some mountains."

Carmen turned his head around and found himself gazing up at the majestic rocky peaks of the western mountains that he had seen when he was up on the hill just yesterday. He couldn't believe that he was now standing at their base, which meant that he must've crossed at least fifteen miles last night. Fifteen miles while being chased by wolves, that is.

"I still don't know where we are, though..." Eikan said. "And there doesn't seem to be any civilization anywhere nearby. We're completely alone and out in the middle of nowhere."

"Yeah, I know that..." Carmen replied. "Let's take care of basic needs first. First, we have to find some water - and then, food."

"There's no river or pond anywhere around here for some reason. But maybe we can find one if we go up those mountains."

"Huh. Looks like a long trip, though. But with all that snow up on the mountain's peaks, there must be water if we head that way. What about food?"

"I don't know. Roasted wolf...."

"Not going to eat that. Huh, what is there to eat?'

Eikan simply shrugged.

"Well, let's get going, then...."   

The two boys continued onwards past the clearing and soon arrived into a valley; the trees here were mostly of birch and oak and there were even some pine, which they had not seen back inside the forest. The ground became very sloped and soon they began proceeding up a rather steep hill that continued slanting upwards for several miles. There appeared to be a forest at the top, but still no river or even any signs of water nearby. Both were now extremely thirsty and their walk became very slow and sluggish, for neither really had that much energy left in them and were dying from the noonday heat.

When they finally reached the forest, which had mostly red deciduous trees as if stuck in the midst of autumn, both were glad to be in an area where there was finally some shade (again). However, they were still extremely thirsty and hungry, for neither had eaten for an entire day, and could not really continue on much further. When they had the chance to rest, Eikan simply fell to the floor on his knees while Carmen sat down in the grass, leaning his back against a maple tree.

"How much farther can we go?" Carmen asked.

"Don't ask me. I think we're going to die soon if we don't find any water."

"Well, yeah, of course. We haven't even reached a tenth of the way up this mountain, but there has to be a river here somewhere if there's all that snow up on the peaks...

They rested for a while, and then the two continued their way through the forest. Soon the ground became very hilly and their path began sloping upwards again; the boys followed this path all throughout the afternoon and by the time evening came, they found themselves standing on the rocky summit of the valley, and yet the mountains still towered tall above them. At least now they could look straight upwards and see the distant clouds and peaks lingering above their destination.

The sun was beginning to set behind the western horizon, and now darkness began to overtake the hills and valleys once again. Carmen looked upwards and received a brief glimpse of what the rest of their journey was going to look like: the mountains were split into several layers of spiraling stone ledges, all of which slowly ascended their way upwards until they reached a very tall cliff - a sheer outcropping of rock near the midsection of the mountains. This was not the summit yet, and still it would take them at least two days to reach - by that time they would've obviously died from dehydration. Not a single river, or any other source of water appeared to be in sight even upon this high elevation. Indeed, Carmen realized that he could see many distant plains and forests miles away up on this hill-valley while the sun was still up. It was now dusk, and the skies were ablaze with many shades of red and pink, surrounded by a deep sea of darkening blue. 

They continued proceeding up the mountainside when suddenly they reached another flat plains area; a brief respite from all the climbing that they had been doing during the day. It appeared to be a meadow of some sorts, filled with many beautiful flowers such as white tulips, or daisies or lavenders, and the place was surrounded by very tall grasses. More importantly, though, there was a lot of wildlife here in terms of fauna, specifically, birds - and they were flying everywhere, singing to each other from tree to tree. As soon as Carmen and Eikan arrived, most of them flew away.

"Huh. I was actually hoping I could catch one of those birds and eat it for dinner..." Carmen said enthusiastically.

"Wouldn't do much to help our thirst, though. Does this look like a good place to rest tonight?" Eikan licked his dry, parched lips. He hardly seemed to have any saliva left.

"I don't know. I wish I could just find some water in this place!"

"Me too."

They sat down upon a couple of large boulder-like rocks situated on the meadow, and watched the fading sunset. A cold breeze blew by, stirring up the plants and flowers, and the night air became quite cool. For about five minutes, neither of them spoke. Carmen turned to look at the face of his "crush," that pretty boy who was just sitting there beside him, who was now his only companion inside this dreaded world. How quaint - ironic, even. Before, he hardly had the chance to even talk to this boy. Now, he was right there, and would always stick with him as long as they were stuck together inside this world...

Eikan turned to look at Carmen, shrugging him a "Why?" and Carmen simply smiled back. He turned away and sighed. "What am I to do now...." he whispered helplessly to himself. "I need food...and water...."

There suddenly came a shrill cry off in the distance, and Carmen turned his head to look at where the sound came from. An eagle - or some other very large bird - was flying from its mountain nest, and it was headed straight towards them. He immediately stood up and braced himself in case it rammed into them or something. But as the bird approached closer, he saw that it was actually extremely large - the size of an elephant, perhaps, with wings that stretched nearly ten meters across. There was no way he could defend against that thing. Carmen and Eikan could only watch helplessly as the golden-furred bird flew ever closer towards them, awaiting their impending doom. They could possibly become food for this thing.

They were suddenly surprised - shocked, even - when they heard words being spoken at them. It came from this very bird! In a very deep and gruff voice, sounding somewhat impatient, it said:

"You two. Come with me."

"Huh!?" Carmen said as he stood up. "You...you can talk!? B-but, you're just a bird!"

"I am a Roc! And you are trespassing upon my hunting territory, for these mountains belong to me and my clan. But I will not kill you. Instead I shall simply bring you to my master."

"Y-y-your master!? Who is that?"

"A wise friend. Human. One of your own kind." The bird swooped down towards them, preparing to pick them up with its claws.

"But wait! I-AHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Both Carmen and Eikan screamed as the Roc grabbed their bodies with its talons and lifted them high up into the air. Carmen soon found himself being held hundreds of meters above the ground - the plains and the forests that they had traversed just yesterday loomed an infinite and dizzying distance below them. He closed his eyes and wanted to scream in fright, but just couldn't for some reason. He almost felt like fainting.

"Let us go!" Carmen yelled at the bird above him.

"No, I will not. This trip will not take long. I shall take you to him soon - the Sage, benevolent master, friend to all good creatures in this world. He will provide you with your needs."

"Sage? What!?"

"This is too weird!" Eikan yelled. "I don't believe this! Talking birds! And they're huge!"

The Roc was flying extremely fast now, and a strong wind was being blown towards them, stinging their eyes. Carmen began to feel tears dripping down his face as the bird continued to fly higher and higher upwards. At this height, he dared not look down. In fact, if he did, he probably wouldn't even be able to see the ground, anyways.

Soon, the night sky grew pitch black, and the air became quite cold. They had been flying like this for about ten minutes now, and both Carmen and Eikan were still completely terrified. They could hardly even speak to each other anymore - and this was partly due to their despairing thirst. Carmen almost fainted from fright of falling down - and it was also due to the intensity of this flight experience - but the stinging cold wind kept him from falling asleep, and he only nodded off a few times before being brought awake again by his hunger or by a sudden blast of wind caused by a sharp curve. The bird - the "Roc" - was slowly spiraling its way up the mountains, making for its peaks, or at least for the summits near where the ice caps were. It took nearly thirty minutes in total for the creature to arrive at its destination.

When the creature finally landed, Eikan and Carmen tumbled to the floor and would not get up - they were simply too weak, tired, and dizzy. As for the bird, it spoke to them: "Here. I have brought you to my dwelling, where the Sage temporarily lives. Go to him and speak with him. Now, I bid you farewell." And with that, the bird was off.

"Well, interesting flight experience, huh?" Carmen said when his heart finally calmed down enough for him to speak.

"Y-y-yeah...too intense for me. And I'm still dizzy."

"I know. The world is still swaying below me....I can hardly believe that we're actually standing on solid ground right now. Speaking of which, where are we?"

"The 'Sage' Dwelling, the bird said, right?"

"Yeah, but we have no idea who this 'Sage' is. Do you think we should actually believe him?"

Carmen stood back up and nearly fell back down again. He saw to his right the entrance to a very huge cave.

"That must be it."

Walking over to Eikan, Carmen helped him up, and then both of them leaned each other against the wall to make sure that they were actually standing on stable ground. It took them about fifteen minutes in total to fully recover from the draining effects of that flight, and afterwards, they once again felt immensely hungry and thirsty.

"Well...it looks to me that there's nowhere else to go BUT that cave over there. To our left is the cliff...and that is obviously not an option."

Eikan nodded. "Still, though, I'm afraid of what's in there..."

"I'll lead the way, then," Carmen said. He slowly walked towards the entrance of the cave. It looked like the mouth of some giant golem-esque monster, where the stalactites and stalagmites fit together to look similar to very sharp teeth. Taking a deep breath, Carmen entered into the looming darkness, while Eikan followed closely behind him.

*

[Neko Desu]

(Continued from the previous post)

To their surprise, it wasn't actually so dark inside, and it was also rather quite warm as well. The smell of food - cooked food, not raw - and tea reached their noses and immediately Carmen and Eikan began wondering just what lay in store for them inside this cave.
 
Not far down the passageway, they found a small "living" room - complete with a table, a carpet, a bed, and - strangest of all - a bookshelf and a fireplace. Sitting on one of three chairs beside the table was an old man, who had graying brown hair and dark eyes and who also wore large red robes. He was drinking some tea at the table, and piled up before him was a wide variety of many other foods including sandwiches, cakes, fruits, roasts (pork and turkey, it would seem), salads, as well as carrot and beef soup. How he got all that when he lived all the way up here.....well, neither Carmen or Eikan cared.

"Come in. Sit down and enjoy the feast."

By now, the two were so hungry that they immediately lost all sense of caution and dug in right away. The old man simply continued drinking the tea while watching them eat, encouraging them to have more and to not spare a single bite of food as long as they were still hungry.

The meal was done about twenty minutes later. Carmen and Eikan, having now satisfied their hunger and thirst, sat back in their chairs and awaited what else the old man had to say. First, the geezer poured them some tea, which smelled of vanilla and cherries; there was honey in it, too. Then, they began talking. 

"I'm sorry it took Erdras so long to find you two. You boys must've had a pretty rough time since you entered this world."

"Yeah, we definitely did. And....who's Erdras?" Carmen asked.

"Erdras? That's the bird who brought you up here to my dwelling - the Roc, I mean. A pretty good friend of mine."

"Wait just a minute...." Eikan said as he brought the cup of tea to his mouth; he blew on it, parting away some of the steam, and then drank. "I can hardly believe any of this. Yesterday morning I woke up to find myself stranded in some forest, and today I got captured by a giant bird who flew me all the way up this mountain. Just....what in the world is going on!?"

The Sage smiled and poured some tea into his empty cup. He slowly drank some of it, then he snapped his fingers - to the boys' surprise, a large, dusty scroll that had been resting upon the nearby bookshelf suddenly flew up into the air and brought itself over to the Sage, landing and spreading itself perfectly out on the table. It unveiled an old map.

"This," Sage Kwiftee said, "Is the map of the world that you're currently in. Prism World, it is called. One of the three subcontinents of the land of Faerie Heart."

Eikan simply stared. Carmen knew almost all of what was going on, and he still felt guilty for dragging his friend into all of this.

"In case you're still wondering, you aren't on Earth anymore. This is another planet, located in a totally different solar system - a totally different universe, in fact."

Eikan made another one of his "strange faces" that spelled out, almost quite literally, "What the hell are you saying!?" upon his lips. Carmen found that cute.

"Well? What's not to believe? Magic sure exists in this world, and also a lot of fantastical creatures and places to explore. This is obviously not Earth. You're in Prism World now!"

"Are you....crazy?" Eikan asked, an expression of total disbelief upon his face. "Magic doesn't exist. It never has, and never will."

"Actually, ummm, Eikan...." Carmen replied, looking at his friend, "Then...how exactly do you explain the events that happened yesterday?"

"Oh? From what I can infer, you've already encountered some of the wonders of this magical world!" The Sage said. "Please do tell. In the meantime, let me show you something interesting." He stood up and walked over to his bookshelf.

"Well, we accidentally encountered some wolves when we were wandering the forest..." Carmen began. "They came very close to us, and that's when suddenly a huge ball of fire burst out of nowhere."

"Who caused the fire?" Sage Kwiftee asked.

"I don't know. I think it was me," Carmen replied. "But Eikan was also able to lift up some rocks using telekinesis or something, which he used to kill the other wolves."

"Interesting," the Sage responded. He walked back towards the table, this time with two small rocks in his hand, each hanging upon a chain of pearls. "Here," he said. "Put them on. As you can see, these magical rocks are currently transparent in colour. Once you wear them for a couple of minutes, they'll begin to....let's just say, change themselves a bit."

Carmen picked up one of the pearl necklaces and observed the rock hanging upon it for a while. It sure was transparent alright, appearing almost as a tiny little sphere of glass; he quickly put it on around his neck. Eikan did the same, though he seemed much more reluctant. 

"Now," the Sage said. "Currently you are in a place called the Roc Mountains, home to those fearsome birds which you met earlier. Yesterday you had been wandering through a place called the Liaken Forest, which is located right at this corne-"

"I just want to know how to get out of here," Carmen interrupted.

"Alright, alright, I'll tell you about that. Escaping from the world of Faerie Heart and returning back to Earth is no easy task. It requires the forging of one of the celestial mirrors."

"What's that?" Eikan asked.

"That in itself has its own story. I will not tell you yet why I require you to forge this mirror for me, but I will tell you how. You see, the solar system that this world is located in is quite different from Earth's - mainly because it only has four planets instead of eight. The closest to us is Iystra, the brightest object in the night sky. Then there is Munos, the green planet; Temarth, a planet famous for having two extremely large rings, and the farthest one is known as Asdren. The Celestial Mirrors are magical artifacts that can channel the power of these four planets into their reflections, and currently there are seven in existence. Four for the planets, one for Faerie Heart, one for Faerie Heart's two moons, and a final for the Sun. I already have all in my possession but the seventh; the Sun Mirror, and that is why I need you to forge it."

Eikan sighed. "This is crazy. First you tell us that we're in some distant fantasy world, and now you expect us to forge some magical mirror? How are we supposed to accomplish such a thing?"

"To forge the Sun Mirror you need to first forge three other artifacts, which will require you to acquire nine items in total. Let me tell you how to find each one of them."

The Sage snapped his fingers and a small piece of paper appeared out of nowhere. It did not fall onto the table; rather, it remained floating up in the air. As the Sage spoke, words began to appear magically upon the page.

"The first item that you must forge is called the Immortal Gem, and to do so, you must first collect three other items:

1. The Blood Adamant is a very rare, scarlet-coloured metal. You must take it from the shell of the ancient Garklen Turtle, who dwells within Erussen Steppe.

2. The Arcane Steel is found in the armor worn by the undead warrior, Feinras, who sleeps within King Merialon's Tomb.

3. Deep inside the Idrioen Cave Palace dwells the lair of the Cerberus. There you must find a candle and use it to acquire the light of Hell's Flame, a magical fire that burns eternally and can never be put out.

Second item is called the Celestial Soul.

1. You will need the Ethereal Dust, which you can acquire from the Rhiekon Entite, a malicious spirit that lives inside the Mistwood Forest.

2. Next you must find the Wargod's Ring, which is carried around the neck of a Nightmare, a ghost-horse type of creature who dwells in the Areidan Swamps.

3. In Thamasan Forest you must seek the Life Crystal from the Master Tree that grows there.

Third and final item is called the Obsidian Jewel.   

1. First you'll need to kill the Hydra who dwells inside the Dienthril Lagoon of the White Beaches to the far south, and afterwards harvest its skin.

2. In the Wyrman Highlands there dwells a garden where a very dangerous snake, the Marilith, lives. Kill it and acquire its eye.

3. You will need a second Life Crystal from the Master Tree, so acquire two in total when you visit Thamasan Forest.

Once you acquire all nine of these items, you must visit the Celestial Path, a place located east of the Liaken Forest. I will visit you there, and afterwards tell you what you must do to finish the forging of the Sun Mirror."

Eikan was just staring at the Sage by that time with a look of complete disbelief upon his face. "You can't expect us to do this," he said. "It's....it's not even possible, nor fair! You want us to go around slaying powerful mythical creatures and exploring perilous places when we have absolutely no idea of what's even going on in this world!?"

"Oh, look, the stone that you're wearing around your neck," the Sage interrupted, "It's changing colour."

"What - stop changing the subject!" Eikan said. "I can't do all of this! I just want to get out of here!"

The Sage smiled. "Do not think that you are the only one. I am a Sage, and a benevolent guide to all travelers in this world. There is another who shares a similar fate, another boy from Earth who accidentally became transported to Faerie Heart as well. I will not tell you his name, but currently he is undertaking a quest much more perilous than yours, and he does not complain as much."

"What!?" Eikan nearly yelled. Carmen almost had to hide a slight chuckle a bit; the stoic mask that his friend almost always wore upon his face was now completely gone.

"The stone around your necks," the Sage said, "It's now a different colour. Yours is blue, and your friend Carmen's is green. Shall I teach you a bit about magic?"
 
"Magic!?" Eikan cried. "Are you really suggesting that it actually exists?"

"Oh, yes, I do. Eikan, the colour of your stone is shows the amount of potency that you have in particular areas of magic. For in this world five different classes of magic exist. That is why it is called Prism World; for, the object which was used to take you here was a pentagonal prism."

Carmen immediately thought back to that old diamond which he made his fateful wish upon. "It was shaped like a pentagon..." He slowly whispered to himself.

"What object? I don't remember anything about how I arrived into this world!" Eikan replied. Carmen groaned and laid his head down upon the table. The guilt was now crushing him.

"Nevermind that. Well, let me tell you anyways. At the top of the pentagon, its uppermost vertex, lies the point of White magic. It uses spells of healing to cure wounds sustained in battle. One's potency in White Magic is determined by a purple stone.

The vertex on the upper-right of the pentagon lies the point of Order magic. It uses spells of the mind, such as telekinesis or perhaps illusions, to bend reality - transforming metals, for example, or making objects levitate, or teleporting things around. One's potency in Order magic is determined by a blue stone - your stone, Eikan.

The vertex on the upper-left of the pentagon lies the point of Elemental magic. It uses spells of nature, namely of fire, water, earth, and air, to create destruction and to destroy enemies. One's potency in Elemental magic is determined by a green stone - Carmen's, in this case.

The vertex on the lower-left of the pentagon lies the point of Curse magic. It uses spells of sabotage to hex the enemy, like poisoning your target or perhaps blinding them. One's potency in Curse magic is determined by a red stone.

The vertex on the lower-right of the pentagon lies the point of a particularly evil strain of magic which you should best avoid: Necromancy. By using spells of pure darkness, Necromancers ressurect the dead and control spirits to do their binding - at the cost of their own souls, of course. Avoid this at all costs! No stone can determine one's potency in Necromancy."

The Sage stood up and stretched. "Well! This is certainly a lot of information for you to be taking in at once. But now that I've told you a bit about how magic works, why don't you give it a try?"

Eikan sighed and struck his face with his palm. "This is all crazy. Magic doesn't exist! I'm not going to be able to start casting spells all of a sudden because of some weird stone!"

"Why don't you try it a little? Your blue stone shows that your mind is very organized, thus determining that you are good at Order magic. Come! Levitate my tea cup for me."

"That's impossible!" Eikan said. "I'm not even going to try. It's too implausible."

"Well, your friend certainly seems to be doing a good job of trying."

Eikan turned towards Carmen, who was now standing beside the wall. "Carmen, what are you doing?"

Carmen smiled, and then he turned his face towards Eikan. "Hey, watch." He thrust his hand out forward, and a small flame appeared upon the tip of his finger.

"Good job!" Sage Kwiftee exclaimed. "But fire isn't the only element that you can control. Try the others: earth, air, and water."

While Carmen nodded and began experimenting, Eikan stood up, appearing very fussy as he watched his friend do clearly illogical things - bending water (in this case, tea) out of cups, causing boulders to rise out of nowhere, and also shifting the air to create wind.

"This is fun!" Carmen exclaimed. "So magic IS real inside this world!"

"I don't believe this," Eikan yelled. "I can't believe you're - how!? How are you doing all that? Magic - magic isn't supposed to exist!"

"Well, try it yourself."

Eikan shrugged and pushed his hand towards the tea cup. "Fine. Here goes."

He eyed the cup for a few seconds, expecting nothing to happen, when suddenly it began floating up into the air!

"Wha - ah!" Eikan yelled. He let go of his concentration and the cup fell back down onto the table.

"Well, that IS your specialty, after all." Sage said. "Order magic. Lifting and moving things around. You can also bend metal, too. I'll show you how once I give you some weapons."

"Weapons!? Are you serious!?"

The Sage snapped his fingers, and all of a sudden, several weapons appeared on the ground beside him. "Take a look! Swords, bows, axes, staves, spears - whatever satisfies you!"

"You're giving us-you're giving us these things? Are you serious?" Eikan cried. "You're not joking about this 'adventuring' thing, huh!"

Carmen walked over to the pile of weapons that lay on the ground beside the Sage. He examined the swords particularly, looking for one that fit him and his size. Eventually he picked up a longsword, and began adjusting himself to its weight.

"Do not use your weapon yet until you are familiar enough with swordfighting. Practice dueling every day with your friend using a stick first."

Eikan looked at all of the weapons, and eventually picked up a spear. It was a long, thin weapon with a wooden handle and a very sharp metal edge - a Javelin.

"Are...you sure?" Eikan asked the Sage. "You're really going to let us hold these weapons?"

"Well, why not? On Earth I am not sure what your tradition is - perhaps your society has advanced to a point where weapons are no longer needed. But in this world, you'll need them if you want to fight properly against a tough enemy."

"What if we die!?" Eikan yelled. "We're barely teenagers! We can't fight off anything!"

"Then you had best start learning," the Sage said. "You leave by tomorrow. Tonight you can rest here at my dwelling. But if you ever want to leave this world, you should start your journey as quickly as possible." He grabbed the map and handed it over to Eikan; as for the little piece of paper containing all the information that they needed to forge the Sun Mirror, Sage Kwiftee gave it to Carmen.

"Wait!" Carmen said. "You're still expecting a little much out of us! I wasn't expecting - well, adventuring and all that! And if you're such a powerful Sage, then why don't you forge the Sun Mirror by yourself?"

"Why not do it by myself?" Sage replied. "Perhaps I should. But I have more important matters to tend to." He closed his eyes and began leaning against the wall. "Prism World is not the only one of my troubles. In other parts of Faerie Heart a war rages on. I have to help the other boy who is also on a similar journey as yours; the one I told you about earlier."

"Just who is he?" Carmen asked. "Why is another person on Earth in Faerie Heart?"

The sage smiled. "All in due time." And then he vanished.

***   

[Yule]

I didn't know I had any part in this story, thanks Mark. Going to read this every time now.

[Neko Desu]

I didn't know I had any part in this story, thanks Mark. Going to read this every time now.

FH is currently on hiatus, and likely will stay that way for a few months.

[Neko Desu]

Chapter III

When Carmen woke up, he found Eikan sitting on a nearby chair, watching him with an obviously impatient and somewhat frustrated look upon his face. He sat up and stretched his arms, letting out a low groan. "Good morning," he said.

"It's noon. I was waiting for you to get up."

Carmen sighed. Eikan was back to his old self; a stoic person with a relatively introverted demeanor. Last night he had acted a little out of control (as would most people if they were presented with such a task), but now he was back to "normal."

Carmen stood up and looked around the cave. Bright sunlight was now streaming through the open entrance behind him; the Sage was not there at the moment. He walked over towards the table and saw some food: bread and cakes, piled up beside the usual jug of tea. Breakfast, I assume, he thought. Carmen sat down to eat, although he was not particularly hungry. He thought Eikan would come and sit down beside him for company, but the other boy did not. Carmen ate a coupe of bites when suddenly his friend spoke up.

"We're supposed to leave soon on the ridiculous quest the old man told us about yesterday. I doubt we'll come even close to completing it."

"Why not?" Carmen asked.

"Why do you think we don't stand a chance of completing this task? Look, that crazy 'Sage' expects us to do things that aren't even possible. I hardly believe that he's not just some completely crazy fool who made all this stuff up to send us to our deaths."

"Well, he was certainly right when he told us that magic exists." Carmen thrust his right hand up into the air and tried to cast a spell, repeating something that he had attempted to do last night. The wind began to swirl around his fist, causing a transparent arrow-shaped projectile of air to appear near him, but before he could finish the spell, the arrow disappeared; his concentration lost.

"I've been thinking about that last night," Eikan replied. "I don't know how we got here, but this world definitely isn't Earth. Yes, magic does exist for some reason, and I have no idea how."
 
"Well, if magic can exist, then why not all the other things that the Sage talked about? We have to forge an artifact called the Sun Mirror, right? It actually sounds like a lot of fun."

Actually, it didn't sound fun at all for Carmen. He simply wanted to spend more time with Eikan, who he did indeed, have a lustful crush on.

"What are you talking about? You actually want to go explore this world and put yourself in extreme danger?"

"Well...not really. But I've always wanted to experience the thrill of going adventuring - and this world has so far been quite exciting."

"It has indeed, for you," came the voice of the Sage as he walked into the cave. "To get off this mountain, I'll have you fly on Erdras the Roc, which will definitely be much faster and safer than climbing down. You'll arrive at the village of Tules, which is located right at the base of these mountains."

"That bird? Again?" Eikan said. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply in frustration. "I wouldn't exactly call flying on him safe, especially since we'll be dangling hundreds of feet up above ground."

"That was because you were holding on to his legs when he flew you up here yesterday. No, today, rather, you'll be flying on his back."

A shrill cry split the morning air as a massive, golden-feathered bird landed upon the cliff, at the entrance of the cave. Carmen stood up and waved at the bird, even though he was still a little frightened by the creature. Eikan simply backed away.

"Here. Your backpacks," the Sage said as he handed to Eikan and Carmen two bags. Inside there was the map of Prism World, as well as a little sheet of paper whereupon was inscribed the items that they needed to acquire in order to complete their task of forging the Sun Mirror. There was also some food packed up inside the bags; mostly they were these wide, round, egg-filled cakes, and also some raw meats as well as various fruits and salads.

"Huh. What are these?" Carmen asked as he picked up one of the cakes.

"They're called moon cakes. I've had some before, but that was back at home." Eikan then turned his gaze upon the Sage, looking at the old man a little suspiciously. "Where exactly did you find these things?"

"I know how to make them," the Sage answered. "They're very filling, aren't they? Eating one can satisfy your hunger for quite a few hours. Sure saves up on the quantity of food you'd normally have to carry."

Eikan did not respond to that. Rather, he simply slung the bag upon his back, grabbed his spear, and then walked out of the cave. Carmen followed him right after he was done eating his breakfast.

"Well then," the Sage said, "Your journey will now begin. When you reach the town, I suggest that you find a guide - try looking inside a tavern or some similar place - to help you on your quest since this world can be quite a dangerous place. I now bid you farewell."

"Wait!" Eikan yelled at the Sage as he turned around. "You don't honestly expect us to....to really complete this quest, do you? I looked at the map yesterday and from what I can infer, you expect us to circumnavigate this entire world, journeying through dangerous places and slaying powerful beasts, when we're only just teenagers? Neither of us have any fighting experience whatsoever!"

"Then you should start learning, or rather, look for your strengths, and start relying on them," Sage Kwiftee replied. "I can tell from your attitude that you were obviously raised in a very....comfortable environment, back at home on Earth. Have you really no fighting experience? Then, what do you do all day, to train yourself?"

"I don't 'train' myself. We go to school and study things like math, science, history, and other subjects like that. Our only 'physical' training comes from playing a few sports every once in a while. And we are absolutely not allowed to even hold weapons back at home."

"Ah. If you study a lot, that means you must be quite smart. Especially if you study math. You see, all maths is like a puzzle. You just have to use a specific formula, or perhaps bend that formula in a certain way so that it would lead you to a comprehensible solution. Casting magic works quite similarly. Obviously, you would not start immediately using your weapon to get you through tough situations. Rather, use your intelligence - your magical potential - to your advantage, and you will survive."

"This is a totally different world! How would you know anything about math?"

"Oh, but I do. All magicians are required to study it, in order to understand its forms and applications in the introspective physical world. But of course its many laws and formulas are all called different things in this world than yours. Tell me, as I am quite interested: on Earth, what exactly do you call those functions that we use to find the angles of a triangle, given certain lengths, or vice versa?"

Eikan rolled his eyes. "Trigonometry. Sine law, cosine law, whatever. How does this relate to anything?"

"It relates to your potential in casting magic. Your specialty lies in transformation and displacement, am I correct? Well, say you have the ability to move and float rocks around. The dull would find only one use for that rock: throwing it at an enemy, in the hopes that it would strike its target. The smart would find ways to manipulate that rock in order to hinder the enemy, before coming in for a kill, just as how one would manipulate a formula in order to find the solution in math. Only strike at your opponent when they are at their weakest! A battle of attrition is the least effective way to win against enemies; if I told you to add up all the numbers from 1 to a thousand, would you really do it? Or would you find a better way to solve the problem?"

Carmen was getting tired of this conversation. Quite frankly, though, he agreed with Eikan's sentiments.

"Look: we really have absolutely no experience out on the field. It doesn't matter if we excel in mathematics or anything, we just-"

"You'd be amazed at the possibilities if you just try," Sage Kwiftee responded. "I am not sure about warfare on Earth - perhaps it is much more dangerous, and that is why you two are so scared. But here in Faerie Heart, one who can cast magic - especially if they know how to manipulate it well - is already two steps ahead of the enemy. First of all, he already has the range advantage - for magic can easily hit from afar. Secondly, he will have tactics at his disposal - boundless strategies and ways to win a battle. If they are smart, then the battle is already won."

Carmen sighed and climbed onto the bird, getting ready to take off. But not before a last retort:

"On Earth we have certain things called guns. If they are fired at you, then you're already dead. For guns can shoot bullets faster than the speed of sound, and if they hit you somewhere like the heart, then there is virtually no way you can survive. And some guns can fire many times in a single row."

"Interesting," the sage replied. "Obviously your society is much more advanced than ours. Perhaps I should keep the concept of 'guns' in mind for later."

The bird suddenly screeched, and then it immediately flew up into the air, nearly throwing Carmen and Eikan off. It turned its head southwards and spread its wings, preparing to begin its flight.

"Good luck!" The Sage waved as he saw the bird fly off into the distance.

Carmen and Eikan each clung on tight to the bird's back as the creature made its sharp descent down the mountains. They soon found themselves flying through a deep fog - perhaps it was the clouds that they were now passing through - and here it became quite cold again. At this speed the wind also became a gale and Carmen found his long hair being whipped backwards, while tears began to sting his eyes, forcing him to keep them closed as they dived further down the mountainside. Soon he could see the ground below him again - a flat plain of green here, a lush forest there; also many lakes and rivers, and to the west, a small town. He then realized that the bird was actually heading that way, for the town of Tules was indeed their next destination, and to the far west - beyond many other, albeit smaller, mountains - was a large desert that they'd most likely have to end up trekking through along their journey.

It took about ten minutes total for the bird to reach the bottom; it landed in a small, lush valley that was located just east of the town, and when Carmen and Eikan got off they once again had to sit down for a few minutes in order to readjust themselves to the feeling of being on solid ground. The bird then said in a deep voice, "Farewell, then. I have heard about the task that you were entrusted, and I was not at all surprised. You are certainly not the first, for there was another, almost seventy years ago now, that was also told to forge a mirror."

"Who was that!?" Carmen asked, suddenly remembering something: his grandfather had been to this world before.

The bird did not answer; rather, it simply spread his wings and flew off, never to be seen again by the two. Carmen turned around and looked at Eikan, and then almost laughed. Eikan's medium-long hair, which was usually a tiny bit curly, now fell flat in front of his eyes, looking as if he had just gotten out of water. Then Carmen touched his own hair and found that it had been completely blown back; he quickly readjusted it to look the way he wanted.
  
"Well, I suppose the only place we can go now is that town over there..." Carmen said to break the silence. Eikan never talked much; he could've just sat there for hours and neither would've said a single thing.

"I guess so. But I still think that the Sage is crazy, and that we're never going to be able to complete our quest. It's simply too much."

Carmen took the piece of paper out of his backpack. "Well, let's look at the closest item that we can get on our list. How about....this? The Arcane Steel. It's located in the tomb of Merialon, right? Well, on our map, the tomb is just west of this place, past the town and the desert."

"Are you serious? You're actually going to go along with this?"

"Well, of course. How else are we going to get out of this world?"

"I don't know. Maybe that old man - if I can even consider him a 'Sage' - was lying to us. Maybe getting back to Earth is actually a lot easier than we think, and in reality we don't need to forge this 'Sun Mirror.'"

"Well, we might as well give it a try. Plus, don't you think that being able to use magic is kind of cool?"

"I guess so."

The two boys started walking westwards, heading up the valley hill and then following an old stone road which led them straight into the town. It looked exactly like the old medieval villages that Eikan and Carmen had seen before in movies: there were straw houses (although some were made of stone) everywhere, and the dirty roads were usually filled with travelers and their horse carriages going about or merchants heading to places with crates and wagons. There were a lot of farm animals, too, such as pigs or chickens, just walking around freely beside houses and stores; children (mostly boys) who wore very ragged clothing were everywhere playing out on roads and squares. Markets selling fruits and meats and other groceries simply stood out on the streets, and usually standing behind them were noisy vendors yelling for people to check out their goods. The smell wasn't very pleasant, either.

"We look totally out of place, here," Carmen said as he walked into the town. "For one, the clothing that we're wearing is actually half decent, so people might think that we're rich or something, when actually we have absolutely no money on us."

"And we're also not dirty or smelly, like everything here," Eikan replied. "Though I suppose several days of adventuring without a change of clothes might alter that. And where am I supposed to go to the washroom?"

"That might be a problem," Carmen agreed. "Well, I don't want to stay here out in the open for too long. Let's go find a place where we can rest, or something."

"An inn?"

"No, more like a tavern. Remember what the Sage told us? We had best find a guide to accompany us on our journey."

"Like anyone would want to help us. I suppose boys our age in this world would be more capable of fighting, though."

"Alright, then. Let's look for a tavern."

They explored the town for about an hour or so before finally arriving in front of a large building with a straw roof; the words "Green Turtle" was painted on the entrance door, likely the name of the pub. The two boys reluctantly entered, and when they did so they found themselves standing inside a dusty old room smelling very much of uncleanliness and alcohol.

*

[Neko Desu]

(Continued from the previous post)

It was a typical bar - typical for this world, that is. A lot of people were sitting around tables, discussing matters of interest or telling stories to each other over a mug of beer. At the table in the front of the room stood the barkeep: a tall, fat man with gray hair and blue eyes, and who wore a red shirt and a white apron. He was currently cleaning out some glass cups. Carmen and Eikan approached him.

"Hey, there. A bit young to be hanging out here, eh?" He turned his head to look at Eikan, staring at the boy a bit rudely. "You look quite strange. Where're you from?"

"Nowhere. We're travelers," Eikan lied.     

"Travelers? But you're just boys. A bit too young to go out braving this dangerous world, in my opinion."

"Whatever," Carmen said. "Do you have any food?"

"What would you like? A pint, perhaps? Red beer? Unicorn wine?"

"No alcoholic stuff, please," Eikan replied stubbornly. The smell of this pub was already beginning to get to him. And it was really hot inside this room, too. Hot and dusty.

"No beer? Then what did you come here for?"
   
"We came here to look for a guide. Isn't this supposed to be a tavern? A place where you can find people to undertake tasks for you?"

"Not find. Hire. Of course we have guides available - lots of adventurers come to this tavern. They're always looking for the right price, though. Can't go on any quests for free, of course."

"Well, can you find us one?" Carmen asked. "We need someone who can guide us over the desert."

"The desert!? Are you crazy? That's a dangerous place - and you seriously can't be thinking of going over to Merialon's tomb, can you?"

"Well, we are. We're.....we're magicians. We can cast magic."

The barkeep looked at the two boys strangely. "Magic? Just where are you from?"

Carmen sighed. This conversation wasn't going anywhere. "Look. We just need a guide. We can take care of ourselves."

"Alright, whatever. Why don't you sit at that table over there while I go and find you someone who you can talk to?"

The boys nodded, and then headed over to sit at a round table that was located at the far right corner of the room. They sat in silence and waited for approximately five minutes before finally being approached by a tall man; he had dark blond hair and blue eyes, and currently he wore a green jacket and brown pants. 

"Are you the two that the barkeep told me to talk to?" The man asked. His accent sounded slightly English; of course, in this world, the term "English" or "British" didn't exist.

"Yes...." Carmen responded, a bit shyly.

"A bit young, aren't you. What are two boys doing trying to hire a guide?"

"We're magicians - we can cast magic and fight (this was a lie, of course). We need someone to take us across the desert."

"The desert! That's a bit extreme. It'll take days for us to cross, even if we move at a fast pace. Where do you want to go, exactly? Not Meri-

"Yes, Merialon's tomb!" Carmen interrupted. He looked over at Eikan, who had a bored and frustrated expression upon his face.

"Why would you want to go there? It's a dangerous place!"

"Yes, we know," Carmen replied. "Dangerous: filled with traps and ghastly beasts just waiting to shred us to pieces. But imagine the rewards! It's a tomb - must be lots of treasure buried there."

By this time Eikan was now clearly confused by what Carmen was saying. He decided to keep quiet about it until the man left them.

"I would consider the seriousness of your request if you were simply a bit older. I do not think you two look the type for.....robbery, much less adventuring."

"We're only going to the tomb to do one thing: slay a fiend. Whatever treasure you find, you can keep it."

"Oh? Sounds tempting. But it is a dangerous place nonetheless, and that is why few people dare to pillage it. Even fewer have come out alive. I suggest you wait until-"

"No, we need to go there, now," Carmen responded. "Magicians like us are not afraid of traps or monsters. We simply need a guide to take us across the desert, so that we don't get lost."

"Alright, fine. How much are you willing to pay me, then?"

"Pay? What about the treasure you can acquire once you're inside the tomb?"

"That's if we manage to even reach this treasure in the first place. This isn't exactly a professional hiring you are conducting if the rewards come as part of the task - though I suppose, that is also one of the benefits. Merialon was a rich king of the old days. Were I able to get my hands on his gold, I would be set for life."

"So? Are you coming with us or not?"

"I would have to think about it. You two still don't look like the type for adventuring."

"In that case, meet us tomorrow morning by the exit of this town - the western exit, which leads out into the desert. We'll show you our powers by then."

The man now had an unpleasant look upon his face. "You two are certainly quite strange. But I am quite interested in finding out what you are capable of. Fine, then: I will meet you by the exit tomorrow morning. Six o' clock, dawn, a good time? I will now take my leave." And then he was gone.

When the man exited the store, Eikan immediately set his frustration loose: "Just what are you trying to do here? Get us both killed!? You know full well that neither of us have had any battle experience before. And we've only just started learning how to cast magic! The man will laugh at us when we show him our 'powers' tomorrow!"

"Not if we practice well enough tonight," Carmen responded. "Let's go somewhere out in the open. Then maybe we can start training ourselves, okay?"

Eikan covered his face with his palm. "This is idiotic. Purely idiotic. I- hey!"

Carmen grabbed Eikan's arm. "Well, why don't we go now?"

"How can you be so enthusiastic about this 'fighting' thing? We don't stand a chance - up against ANYTHING!"

"What about those wolves we killed, two days ago?"

"That was just pure luck. I doubt we have the power to do anything like that again."

"Well, remember what the Sage said? We can be creative and experiment with our powers a little bit!"

"He was a senile old man! Did you actually believe anything that he said?" 

Carmen smiled. Maybe it was just him, but he enjoyed having arguments with Eikan. When they were at school back on Earth, Eikan was an extremely quiet person; a wallflower bordering upon 'antisocial.' To get him to receive a formidable reaction out of anything was quite a daunting task indeed. He had few friends; Carmen was certainly not one, he simply had a crush on Eikan and therefore was slightly obsessed with him. It was also the reason why they were sitting together now, inside a pub in a totally foreign world. 

"Come with me." Carmen stood up and walked out of the tavern, and Eikan followed closely behind him; they continued exploring the town a bit, with Eikan being completely frustrated all the while, until they finally came upon an open field. Here Carmen found two large sticks that lay on the ground, appearing sturdy enough - probably branches that had fallen from some trees. He handed one over to Eikan.

"Okay. First we practice a bit of swordfighting." Eikan rolled his eyes and held the stick in both of his hands; it was quite heavy for him. He didn't expect Carmen to suddenly come charging towards him, nearly bulldozing him over when Carmen accidentally struck his stick on Eikan's chest.

"Hey! What are you doing? You're supposed to defend yourself when I attack you, not just stand there and wait to be killed!"

"What are you doing!? You're not supposed to attack me like that!"

"Why not? Imagine I was an enemy. Now, let's see what you can do!"

The "sword fight" with sticks turned out quite lame. While Carmen was overly enthusiastic, Eikan was...well, he was not at all strong (neither of them really were), and he hardly tried to defend himself most of the time - much less attack back. Fortunately, Carmen had taken some fencing classes before, so he knew a few tricks which he taught Eikan. The lesson did not end until Carmen made sure that Eikan was familiar with everything, and by that time the sun had already set and it was late dusk. 

"Well, we've been practicing for over three hours now with the 'swords'. Why not try some magic next?"

This, Eikan seemed more enthusiastic to. He walked over towards Carmen and stood beside him. "Alright. What do you want me to do?"

"How should I know? We both cast completely different branches of magic! While I practice my element-spells, why don't you try practicing yours?"

"Okay...

Eikan turned towards the stick that he had held earlier and concentrated his mind upon moving it. To his surprise, it was lifted up in the air with relative ease.

"Well, that was easy."

He then looked at the stick a bit and felt, in his mind, every angle and every inch of its shape. It suddenly dawned upon him that he could also bend the stick, and he did just that: within seconds he had transformed the branch into a weird hook-like shape. Of course, with solid wood, this shape was really hard to maintain and Eikan quickly let go of the spell in order to recover his energy. The J-shaped branch fell to the floor.

"Huh. Interesting," Carmen said as he looked over towards Eikan's performance. "Don't really know what you could do with bending wood, though."

"Well, it might be useful if I ever go into battle with a soldier. I could simply bend his sword, and he'd be left defenseless."

"True....

While Eikan continued practicing the magical art of levitating things and bending them, Carmen began finding out what he could do with the elements. Creating small fires upon the tips of his fingers was easy, and big fires - explosions, they were called - he had already tried before on the wolves a couple of days ago when they were still inside the forest. With water he could only bend and swirl what was already there, but it was extremely hard for him to conjure it out of nowhere. Walking over to a puddle, Carmen placed his hands over the water and watched as he first boiled the muddy liquid, and then froze it into solid ice. "Interesting...

Next was air. He tried the arrow-thing again: manipulating the wind into an "offensive" shape, and this time, succeeded in doing so: it wasn't very powerful, though. Carmen realized that, in order to make that spell useful, he would have to learn how to change the shape of the visible wind into a sharp enough object so that it would become solid enough to pierce the target. With the final element, earth, he began trying to shake the ground. It was easy moving a few pieces of dirt and rock around, but to actually create something like an earthquake was far beyond his abilities.

Eventually, Carmen got tired after a while. He walked over towards Eikan, who was now learning to bend the shapes of trees and making them dangle in odd positions. "Having fun?" Carmen asked as he watched Eikan bend the top of a pine tree all the way to the ground. "Yeah, I guess so..." Eikan replied. "Magic is quite fun, I guess. Maybe we are ready to go adventuring. Still, it is a bit too much at this point..."

"I know. Hungry?" He took out some moon cakes from his backpack and handed half of them over to Eikan. The other boy grabbed it and eyed the food suspiciously, before nearly eating it whole. Carmen could see that his friend was indeed, quite famished after practicing sword fights (with sticks) and magic all day.

The two sat down together underneath a large elm tree to begin their evening meal. Since their food supplies were limited, they tried to eat as little as possible and only stuck to having a few more moon cakes as well as some fruit. For Carmen this was quite unusual, since he came from a rich family where food was always in abundance and he never once went to bed hungry at night. Looking over what was available inside his backpack as well as Eikan's, Carmen realized that they only had enough food to last them three weeks, and that was only if they rationed themselves to a limit of two meals per day. Their journey, however, might take far longer than three weeks depending on how things turned out for them - perhaps months, even.

But then again, those months might not be so bad if he could spend them alongside Eikan. Right now they were just "friends," but Carmen wanted to develop their relationship a bit 'further' beyond that. 

"Where are we going to sleep tonight?" Eikan asked when he was done eating his food.

"I don't know. Out here, I guess."

"Here? Out in the open!? It's too hot, and we'll probably get bitten by a ton of mosquitoes."

"Well, where else are we going to sleep? We certainly don't have the money to rent a room at the inn!"

"Fine. Well, I suppose we might as well get used to sleeping outdoors if we're actually going to go along with this stupid adventure." 

"We should sleep early, too, then. We have to wake up early next morning to meet that man at the town's exit, remember?"

Carmen laid his backpack beneath his head to use as a pillow, while he adjusted himself into a comfortable sleeping position against the trunk of the tree towering behind him. As he was about to close his eyes, he suddenly saw something amazing out in the night sky: the gigantic twin moons.

They were of course, not much larger than the moon back on Earth, but since on this planet they existed so much closer to Faerie Heart, they appeared very huge. "Eikan, look," Carmen said, pointing towards the sky. "These moons. They're so huge and beautiful! One's blue, and the other is gray. They almost appear as if they were twins!"

Eikan sat up and stared at the moons in disbelief. "I've never seen.....those moons. They are huge!"

"I guess there's no denying it now: we're definitely in a different world," Carmen commented with a sigh.

"Yeah. You're right. It still makes me angry, though: I don't care anymore who brought us here, or why, I just want to get off this planet and return to my home back to Earth."

A pang of guilt struck Carmen once again. "Well, even if we did manage to return to Earth.....our lives are definitely going to become very different. 'Cuz then we'll know that there exists a whole 'nother world out there, and on that world, there are humans just like us...."

"I've been thinking. Faerie Heart must somehow be connected to Earth in one way or another; look, everyone here even speaks English! And many of our buildings look the same: the houses, for example; it's just that this planet seems to be stuck about a thousand years back in the past. The other weird thing is: magic exists in this world. I'm not sure what to believe anymore, or how I can even begin to trust science again after I return back to Earth - if we return, that is."

"We will return. I don't like this place anymore than you do - but we might as well enjoy our time together in this world while we still have the chance. I mean, once we return back to Earth, we probably won't be able to cast magic anymore...."

"I know. Still, Earth is definitely a much better place to be in than here. That's why I want to return as quickly as possible."

"Alright, then. Anyways, I think we should go to sleep now..."

Carmen closed his eyes and did not open them again until early next morning, at the crack of dawn.

***

[Neko Desu]

Chapter IV

"Carmen. Wake up."

The boy opened up his eyes to find the sky above him still dark; though it was now veiled in a faint blue that foreshadowed the imminent arrival of dawn from the eastern horizon with its glorious reds and triumphant oranges. Eikan was leaning over him, the owner of a face who Carmen never dreaded to see in the morning.

"What time is it?" Carmen asked as he sat up and stretched his arms and legs.

"I don't know. But we should hurry up and get going if we're to meet the man that we talked to yesterday."

"Can't we have breakfast first?" Carmen complained as he stood up and grabbed his backpack.

"Okay, we'll eat along the way."

Carmen took out another moon cake from his bag. "Alright. Where to?"

"The western exit of this town. Since the sun rises from the east, we should head in its opposite direction; that way," Eikan answered, pointing towards the far end of the field.

They began journeying through a countryside of rolling hills and valleys, passing many farms and wheat fields along the way. Neither talked, for it was still too early in the morning for the two boys to want to say much. Eventually they arrived back into town, reaching a road called "Crescent Watch;" from here they turned to their left and came near a tall iron gate bordered by many wooden fences which spread out and circumnavigated across town. The gate was currently closed, but the sign "Exit" was painted upon the door; hopefully we've arrived at the right place, Carmen thought to himself.

The boys laid down their bags and sat beside the gate, waiting for the person that they talked to yesterday to arrive. It didn't take very long; ten minutes later, a tall, blond man dressed in a green jacket and wearing a feathered hat came up to them - he appeared to be an archer, for a quiver of arrows and a bow was slung across his back.

"Didn't think you would actually come," the man said as he walked up to Eikan and Carmen.   

"Of course we would. So, you're willing to be our guide across the desert, then?"

"Only once I learn a bit more about you and this...'quest' of yours. Tell me first: from which land do you two originate, and also explain to me why you want to raid the tomb of King Merialon."

"Can't we just skip those questions and get on with this journey, already?" Carmen asked. "It'll take a long time for me to explain."

"And I can wait. Tell me."

Carmen sighed. "Alright, then. We're from, ummm, the castle Rutham, to the south," he began, quickly thinking up of a place off the top of his head; the castle of Rutham came to mind first, which he took note of the last time he had looked at the map of Prism World. "We're currently on a quest to collect items from all over the world. One of them happens to lie in the Tomb of Merialon."

"What kind of a quest?"

"Well, first of all, have you heard of a person named Sage Kwiftee?"

"Sage Kwiftee? Can't say I have. Is he perhaps a magician from the kingdom which you came from?"

"Ummm, well.....oh, why yes, indeed! We're his apprentices, actually - and to complete our training, he sent us on a quest to forge the Sun Mirror, a powerful artifact that requires us to journey across the world and gather various items."

"You two are a magician's apprentices? To think that he would send you on such a quest is absurd!"

"Oh, why?"

"Because first of all, magicians never travel alone - they're usually of high or royal blood and therefore have consorts. You would not need me as a guide if you were truly from the Castle Rutham, for there would be soldiers journeying alongside you to aid you on this 'quest' of yours."

"We're not of royalty or anything. We're....orphans. Sage Kwiftee took us in only out of kindness since our parents died a couple of years ago."

"Ah, the war?"

"The...war? Oh yes, our families...they were attacked. Only a few of us made it out alive." Carmen was now making things up right off the top of his head.

"I am sorry. The Necromancers of Oshoran are cruel and savage villains, indeed." Oshoran, huh? Carmen thought as he remembered a place with that exact same name on the map of Prism World.... 

"Still," the Archer continued, "Why would Sage Kwiftee send you on such a dangerous quest alone?"
 
"Well, to tell you the truth, we don't know much about why the Sage wants us to go on this quest, either. But since he's been so kind to us - taking us in as his apprentices when our parents died - we had no choice but to accept."

The man sighed. "Your tale's a bit strange, I must admit. Well, a lot of strange things have been happening around here since the Necromancers from the south invaded our land. Very well then, I'll be your guide and lead you across the desert. I might even follow you into the tomb as well to try to grab some treasure for myself. The name's Marcus, by the way."

"Alright, then. Should we get going?" Carmen asked with a sigh of relief.

"Okay. We'll head west across the plains for about five miles, meaning that if we keep a steady pace, we should arrive at the desert by noon. It'll then take us around three to four days to cross the entire desert; this is all on foot, by the way, as I'm assuming that you don't have any horses with you."

Carmen shook his head. "No. We're fine with walking."

Marcus approached and knocked on the large iron gate. "This is Marcus, the town's huntmaster! Open up and let me through!'

There came the sound of a key fitting through a lock on the other side of the gate, then a metal "clang" as its large metal doors finally swung open. As the three walked out, they were approached by several guards who greeted Marcus fondly as if he was an old friend of theirs, but then they looked with suspicion upon the two boys who stood beside him. "Who are these kids?" One of the guards asked.

"They're magicians. From the Castle Rutham, they say. I'm supposed to guide them across the desert to the tomb of Merialon."

"The Endless Desert! And those boys are magicians, you say? A bit young, if I may say so myself."

"But we're still magicians, nonetheless," Eikan said a bit coldly as he turned to look at the guard. A wicked thought suddenly came to his head. Eikan began concentrating his mind upon the sword that lay at the guard's belt, and then he began casting a spell by moving his hand in an obscure pattern; it ended when he flicked his wrist backwards. The sword suddenly shot out of its sheath, away from the man's grasp, and landed in Eikan's hand. The other guards all gasped in surprise and immediately took a step back. Eikan couldn't help but chuckle a bit at the guards' reactions, but he laid down the sword and smiled.

"So you do know how to cast magic," Marcus exclaimed. "I was still a bit skeptical at first, but now I'm certain. Nice little trick you performed there." He picked up the guard's sword and returned it to the man.

"Alright then, we'll let you two through," the guards said as they closed up the gate behind them. 

Their journey had now begun. Westwards the trio traveled, running across flat plains and lush meadows as the late dawn arrived, bathing the sky in colourful shades of red and driving away the dark morning landscapes. Marcus led the group as he ran ahead of Eikan and Carmen, making his endurance known when he had to stop several times in order to wait for the two boys to catch up. The archer was indeed, quite surprised at the physical weakness of his young companions, for back in the day - or, in this world's case, at the current age - usually children were much stronger and more fit since many were farmers or hunters who began working at a very young age. Boys spent their days out in the field and scarcely had any time to play, and even when they did, their entertainment did not derive from staying at home but rather by playing games with their friends outside. With Eikan and Carmen, two teenagers from Earth, this was obviously not the case. Though both were quite thin, neither were really that physically fit; Carmen was a bookworm who stayed at home to read all the time, while Eikan enjoyed studying a lot.

"For a couple of boys your age, you really aren't very strong," Marcus said when he stopped for already the third time this morning to wait for Carmen and Eikan to catch up to him. "Why are you two so slow?"

"We're not slow, you're simply too fast!" Carmen exclaimed as he stopped running to catch his breath. "Plus, we're magicians. Back at the castle, we spent most of our time studying and didn't really get much chance to go out and play."

"Huh. I see; in that case, this journey might take a bit longer than I thought - unless you two speed up your pace."

"How much farther till we reach the desert?" Eikan asked.

"Not very. We should still be able to arrive at around noon. Now, let's go."

They continued running and eventually, the day became very hot as the sun rose higher and higher up into the sky; also, the ground soon became very desolate and barren, and the lush valleys blooming with grass and flowers in the distance were instead replaced with tall rocky mountains that loomed ominously over the party's destination. For indeed, the desert and the tomb were located in a region known as the Namras Wastelands, a place that was surrounded by very tall mountains and was largely closed off from the rest of the world, save for a certain exit directly south of the desert that led into the Scorion Plains. The mountains bordering the desert were not as grand as the Roc Mountains, of course, but they were so steep and perilous that they seemed to enclose the desert as if the place was some huge canyon; climbing over them was almost impossible.

The place was also very dry and humid, so by the time the party finally arrived at the entrance of the desert they were extremely thirsty from all the running that they had to do throughout the morning. Carmen and Eikan sat down to eat lunch; once again all they ate was a couple of moon cakes in order to rationalize the amount of food that they had; as for water, they drank from the few bottles that the Sage had provided them. It was not a lot - only enough to sustain them for about a week or so - which made their journey through the desert extremely perilous since if they did not make it through in time, then they would end up being without water for days. As for Marcus, he had brought along his own pack of food and water, so he mostly ate by himself. 
 
When they were finished eating their lunch, the group packed up their food and prepared to set out again. It was then that Marcus decided to give the two boys a warning: "They don't call this place the Endless Desert for no reason, you know. Of course, there is an end to it, but once you enter the place, you'll find nothing but sand, endless miles of it, and with the unbearable heat it'll feel as if you've been journeying through the place forever. A lot of travelers lose their way here and die to the elements, or by thirst and starvation; don't worry, though, because I've been here hunting before so I know my way through this desert quite well. That leaves us only one last thing to worry about..."

"What's that?" Carmen asked.

"The creatures that prowl this desert, of course. Nothing too terrible, but some of them are quite fiendish. I'll tell you the ones that we should worry about as we make our way through here. Come, let's get going." 

Not long after entering the desert, under the heat of the afternoon sun the temperature became perilously hot and the party slowed their pace down to a tired and sluggish walk. Running, as they had done throughout the morning, was now out of the question - they would become dehydrated too easily, which was not a good situation to be in considering their limited water supply. The air in the desert was very dusty due to all the wind-blown sand everywhere, which added to the dryness of this arid region; the sand also slowed them down since it was much more difficult walking upon it than on proper solid ground. While Carmen kept himself quiet for the rest of the day, Eikan made no secret of his dislike for this hot place by remaining in a rather grumpy mood throughout the afternoon until evening came and the air became considerably cooler. This was also the first time for both boys to actually see a desert in real life, and their experience was obviously made far less pleasant by the fact that they were stuck in another world; one that, they would soon find, was full of danger.

"How much longer until we get out of this desert?" Eikan asked when he finally became fed up with the place. Dusk was now approaching but the air was still quite hot, and Eikan and Carmen were getting rather frustrated with all the sand being blown into their eyes. Heck, they were now beginning to detest sand in general due to its endless abundance within this region, as well as the fact that its very existence now reminded them that there was still a ways to go before they could leave the desert.

"Like I said, around four days - we kept a good pace today and managed to cross the first ten miles or so. We should stop when it gets dark," Marcus replied.

"Where are we going to find a place to rest, then?" Carmen asked.

"We won't find shelter anywhere around here unless we get close to the mountains, which is still quite far off. We're rest out in the open, then."

"Out here!? But didn't you tell us earlier that there were a lot of 'dangerous creatures' lurking inside this desert?"

"True, but those creatures are mostly very territorial and will keep to themselves unless we accidentally cross into their habitats."

The party continued walking through the desert as the sun went down behind the western horizon and the sky became dark. The large twin moons which Eikan and Carmen had observed yesterday came out once again, and they were a beauty to behold for the three travelers in the sand, appearing as a beacon of light to guide them through this perilous place. The night air was quite cool, and the boys soon found that walking through the desert at night was far preferable to journeying through it during the day. Eventually it came time for them to stop and rest, and by then the three were famished - Eikan and Carmen ate two moon cakes each, as well as some fruits and a sandwich from the raw meats and bread that the Sage had provided for them. One thing that they noticed was that their food never rotted or became stale, and always retained a fresh taste - possibly due to a magical enhancement cast upon them by the Sage.

"I've got to learn, sooner, or later, to conjure water with my magic powers," Carmen stated as watched Eikan play around with a few small rocks in his hand by levitating them.

"Yeah, that'd be quite useful. We wouldn't need to worry about refilling our water bottles if you did so."

"Problem, is, I don't know how. I can easily conjure a flame out of nowhere - fire is the element of passion, so all I really have to do is to focus my emotions upon something." He remembered that night, about three days ago, back inside the Liaken Forest when his fear had allowed him to create a fire to burn the wolves that were pursuing him and Eikan.

"Air is also easy," Carmen continued. "It's everywhere around us, so all I really need to do is use my imagination to alter it into becoming something powerful, like an arrow. Earth is very practical - but kind of hard to control, since I need to use up a lot of my energy in order to manipulate it. But water....I just don't know how to command it, unless it's right there in front of me."

"Well, how do you create something out of nothing, anyways?" Eikan asked. "I wouldn't know since the spells that I cast have nothing to do with the elements."

"I actually have no idea, either. Perhaps it's because I'm not concentrating hard enough - water is a very fluid element, requiring a lot of stabilization and control. I've tried bending it, boiling it, and freezing it before - and trust me, doing so takes a lot of energy out of you."

"Your spells actually sound a lot more useful than mine, since you can actually damage an enemy by turning the elements against them. All I can do is move stuff around, like levitating rocks or bending swords."

"That's because you need to be more creative! If we were in a forest, for example, you could try to move - or 'bend' - the trees around in order to block the enemy from reaching us. That would've been useful back when we were being chased by those wolves inside that forest."

"I guess so...."

Eikan looked up at the star-filled sky. "I actually think I can do something else with my magical spells - besides just moving objects around, I mean. I think I may be able to create illusions...."

"Illusions? What do you mean?"

"Well, first of all, I believe that I have a photographic memory. And sometimes, if I try hard enough, I can picture certain things so clearly....and perhaps, just maybe, I could bring those things in my mind to life. They won't be real, of course - but illusions can be helpful to us in certain ways."

"Interesting. You might wanna try it out later on when we get the chance."

Carmen plopped down upon the sandy ground. "I guess sleeping like this won't be very comfortable when there's so much sand beneath your head. But I'm tired, so I should really get some rest now."

"Alright," Eikan said as he laid down upon the sand beside Carmen.

"Goodnight."

*

[Neko Desu]

(Cont'd from the previous post)

The three woke up early in the morning, before dawn again, to get a head start upon their journey across the desert. They ran for about the first few hours in the morning before the sun came out, while the air was still quite chilly; then when it got too hot they slowed down to a light jog. To save time, they did not stop to eat breakfast along the way but rather ate as they walked; Marcus stayed in the lead, always running a few yards ahead in order to properly lead the group. He once again complained that Carmen and Eikan were too slow and should be "stronger built" at their current age; in fact most boys in Faerie Heart were much more energetic and usually preferred to explore ahead of the adults when they were out on a journey. Carmen had done some long distance running before in middle school, but he had never been really that good at it; meanwhile Eikan was just quite physically weak in general, despite being rather thin and tall.

In the heat of the afternoon sun the party came across something rather strange and ill in the desert: quicksand. Or rather, an entire sea of it - an ocean of drifting sand, very wet and fluid much like the dirt you would find lying underwater if you scooped some up. Eikan nearly fell into this "ocean" when his foot accidentally plunged into the liquid sand.

"And this here, you see, is why people call this place the 'Endless Desert.' For almost half of it is not a proper, solid desert but rather an ocean of quicksand; nobody knows how it got here, or what phenomenon caused the sand to become like this. Either way we must now find a path to skirt around this ocean; it'll probably take us at least two days to do so, and then we should be in the clear."

"Two days!? That's a very big 'ocean'," Eikan replied in a frustrated tone. "Is this why the desert's so dangerous?"

"Half of it, yes. But there are many more dangers - some even worse than an ocean of quicksand. You'll soon find out why."

They began heading south for a few miles, and then turned west again once they steered clear of the quicksand. Here the ground was a lot more smooth (probably because of the runoff of sand into the 'ocean'), and thus the air was not nearly as dry or dusty; it was still just as hot, though, and there were a lot more hills and sand dunes inside this region. Much to Carmen's dismay the party also accidentally came upon a nest of scorpions while passing through a particularly steep fault that was surrounded by two large hills; these ones were about two feet long and had scaly jet-black skin; they were definitely poisonous. Carmen had a huge phobia of anything that was small and insect-like, so he proceeded past the scorpion's nest with as much caution as possible. To his great amusement, he found several of the scorpions drowning (or were they swimming?) in the quicksand when they reached the shores of the sand-ocean later in the afternoon; they were now in a very mountainous region of the desert, and here there also seemed to grow a lot more vegetation in the form of weeds and cattails and even some small but pretty white flowers. Carmen's amusement was immediately replaced by terror when he suddenly saw a giant fish-like creature, almost eight feet long and about as wide as his own body, jump out of the sand-ocean and devour the scorpions whole.

"What are those things!?" Carmen exclaimed.   

"They're the sand-fish of this desert. Can breathe out of water and jump over a meter tall to attack its prey - quite dangerous, indeed, even to us humans. But delicious to eat."

"What?" Eikan asked, bewildered.

"Oh, they are quite delicious indeed. To save up on the food that we currently have, you should go and catch one for dinner."

"What!? You expect us to swim into quicksand!?"

"No, of course not. But didn't you two say that you were magicians? You should have a spell that can easily make quick work of these fish, right?"

"Well..." Carmen stepped forward towards the quicksand. To his surprise one of the sand-fish suddenly leaped out of the water and tried to bite him - the boy immediately jumped back and the fish fell onto the shore. But it was still jumping and gnashing at him viciously.

"Woah! That creature's scary!" Carmen yelled. He quickly remembered the "Arrow" spell that he had taught himself earlier; concentrating his mind upon the air around him, a visible wind began to appear, comprised of thin shreds of wispy drafts; he then slowly began to manipulate this "wind" until it became shaped like a funnel, with a very sharp 'tip' (although it was transparent and had no physical form). He suddenly felt a sharp pain course through his legs as the fish jumped again and bit his knee. Carmen jumped back, and then immediately unleashed his spell upon the creature - it was struck right in the head with the wind-funnel, a force that was (very surprisingly) equal to that of a crushing boulder. The fish was instantly knocked out before an arrow from Marcus's bow finished it off.

"Are you okay?" Eikan asked as he ran up to Carmen to inspect his leg. It was indeed, bleeding, with two sharp fang-like marks upon his knee.

"I really hope that creature wasn't poisonous...." Carmen said as he sat down upon the sand. Marcus immediately rushed over with some blood-soaking cotton, healing medicine, and a bandage-like rag - he probably had a first-aid kit somewhere inside his backpack.

"Don't worry, it isn't," Marcus said. "Hopefully the bite mark isn't too deep, or you might have trouble walking in the next few days." He dabbed at the wound with the cotton; then he took out a big black bottle. "This is healing water," the man said. "Made from a cleric's spell and some medicinal plants. It'll cure your wound up in no time. It may hurt a little, though." He then opened up his bottle and placed the cotton swab through it, soaking up the liquid inside; afterwards he placed the cotton onto Carmen's knee, which made the boy grimace in pain. After about ten seconds, though, he suddenly felt his leg begin to go numb, and the spot where he was bitten become rather cold. When about a minute or so passed, the man removed the cotton and then tied the rag around the boy's knee, covering up the wound. Carmen already began to feel better.

"Thanks. Whatever that medicine was, it was really potent," Carmen said.

"Hunter's specialty - a potion for all occasions," Marcus replied. "I always carry it around with me, along with a bunch of other medicines - an Antidote in case of poisoning, for example," he said. "Anyways, your spell was really impressive. I've watched rituals conducted by clerics and doctors before to create healing potions, but never something like....that. So you really are magicians, after all."

Eikan nodded. "What about the fish? Do we eat it?"

"Sure," Marcus replied. "But we have to cook it first, obviously. Since you're a magician, do you know any fire spells?"

"Yeah, I do," Carmen replied. "Fire doesn't go well with sand, though."

"Don't worry. I have the solution for that." Marcus walked over to his backpack and took out what looked like a frying pan. He then filled it up with water from his water bottle.

"You sure carry a lot of stuff in that bag of yours..." Eikan said.

"Yes, indeed I do. A hunter must always go prepared, no matter where he journeys next." He placed the large, eight-foot long fish into the pan (or whatever section of it would fit), and then asked Carmen to boil the water. The boy did just that by creating a fire upon the tips of his fingers.

"Your magic is really impressive," Marcus said. "I wish I could cast spells like that."

"Well, why can't you?" Carmen asked.
 
Marcus shook his head. "It takes a lot of training, as well as an education," he said. "Commoners like me don't get that. You two are quite lucky, since you told me before that you were orphans - whoever your master is, he must've been really kind to offer two poor children the benefit of being a magician's apprentice."

"Indeed, he was," Carmen answered, going along with the lie that he had concocted earlier.

They waited until the fish was fully boiled before eating. Using their hands, they dug through the scales to grab the meat inside, making sure to avoid touching the organs (such as the gills).

"This fish doesn't seem to have any blood..." Carmen noted.

"Indeed, it does not. Creatures that dwell in the sand-ocean are rather strange, and quite possibly, magical."

It was indeed, delicious, though tasting very different from regular fish - more crispier, and having somewhat of a spicy scent to it. Since it was eight feet long, there was no way that they could eat all of that in one meal - so, they cut off the portion of the fish that they had finished eating, and then tucked the rest away into a bag. Eikan and Carmen drank the delicious soup. By that time, evening was fast approaching, so the party only journeyed a bit more before turning in for the night.

The next day wasn't too different from the earlier ones - once again they woke up early in the morning to depart on their journey, and once again they steered clear of the quicksand-ocean to avoid the scorpions and sand-fish lurking near it. It was not until their fourth day inside the desert that something really exciting began to happen - and quite dangerous, too.

They started to encounter a particularly queer-looking fiend: it looked like a giant brown onion head, with eyes and a mouth and greenish stem-like arms and legs, standing no more than two feet tall.

"What is that?" Carmen asked.

"It's called an Ochu. Or, well, a rather young one - this means we're officially nearing the end of the desert, but at the same time, also approaching danger zone..."

"What does that mean!?"

"The Ochu is a powerful creature. Not these young ones, of course - they are simply the 'seedlings' of their parent, a much larger and far more dangerous beast. It is a half-plant, half-animal type of monster that dwells inside a certain cave of this desert. Trouble is, we're going to have to pass by the entrance of this cave if we want to get out of here."

"Why!?"

"You'll see soon enough."

In the afternoon, after finishing eating the Sand-fish, the party continued westwards and eventually arrived back at the shores of the sand-ocean. On their left (which was to the south) they were bordered by large, rocky cliffs, which essentially left them "trapped" in the middle of a small, narrow passage that snaked its way through the desert between the quicksand and the mountains.

And then there was the cave.

It was a Scylla-or-Charybdis situation, in which a terrible monster awaited them to their left, while to their right was a whirlpool of death - but in this case it wasn't a whirlpool, it was simply quicksand. Lots and lots of quicksand. Now the cave was indeed the lair of the Ochu, the largest and one of the scariest creatures that the party had ever seen before. Sneaking up towards the cave's entrance, they saw sitting inside (what looked like) a giant, gruesome, onion-shaped plant; except that this 'plant' had a massive mouth lined with several rows of extremely sharp teeth. It also had two round eyes, and a head full of brown stem-like tentacles shaped to resemble horns. Its skin was green, much like grass, and the monster was surrounded by at least twenty smaller Ochus.

"Okay. How are we supposed to get past that!?" Carmen asked, sounding rather hysterical.

"We should try to sneak across the entrance of the cave. But with so many smaller Ochus on the lookout, we will surely get spotted!"

"Can those Ochus even move?"

"The smaller ones are quite fast. The big ones can actually move, but most of the time, they choose not to and simply send their seedlings out to hunt for them."

"I see. That certainly doesn't sound very good for us, then..."

Carmen turned towards Eikan, who he realized hadn't been saying much about their current situation. "Eikan? Do you have a suggestion on what we could do?"

"Yes....but, I've never tried it before. It's about creating illusions."

"Huh?"

"I could...distract those Ochus by creating an illusion. And then we'll just walk right past them."

Carmen then remembered his friend talking about this a few nights back. "Oh...that," he recalled. "Well, sure! Why don't you give it a try?"

"I don't know what I could create, though. What would be rather distracting to an Ochu?"

"Their favourite prey, in terms of food, of course," Marcus suggested. "Actually, Ochus can really eat anything. Just send in something big, something that would keep them preoccupied for a while."

"Like...like a sand fish?"

"Yes. I believe I've seen some Ochus take even those creatures down, before."

"Well, then, here goes."

Eikan closed his eyes and began to remember a picture of how that Sand fish he had eaten just earlier looked like. Or, more accurately, the Sand Fish when he saw it swimming around in the quicksand two days ago - it wasn't very difficulty for him (with his photographic memory, of course) to recall the creature's form, and eventually he was able to see it in perfection. He then tapped his fingers onto his wrist, trying to channel his mind's energy onto some solid object. Slowly, like an artist painting a picture, he began to bring that creature to life; every fin, every scale, every tiny little portion of its body...

When the boy opened up his eyes, he was surprised at what he had done - there, standing in front of him, was a Sand Fish in perfection - a truly accurate form.

"How did I do that!?" Eikan asked.

"You were closing your eyes and concentrating. Then, the space in front of you got all misty and foggy, and when you opened up your eyes, the mist disappeared, revealing this creature," Carmen answered.

"Well done indeed!" Marcus pitched in.

They observed the Sand fish. It seemed to be just...floating there. Wasn't attacking them or anything.

"I think I can control my illusions..." Eikan said. "So all I'll do is just send this fish up to the Ochus, and wait for them to attack it?"

"Yes, you should do just that," Marcus replied. 
 
First, Eikan created two more Sand fish; this took him about five minutes to do. When he was done all that, he then sent them out, one by one, into the cave. There came some answering growls, and then suddenly the sounds of jumping, gnawing, and tearing as the Ochus inside the cave began to storm their prey.

"They've taken the bait. I wonder how illusionary Sand fish tastes like? Anyways we should hurry now."

As quietly as possible, the party ran past the entrance of the cave. As they did so, Carmen sneaked one tiny peek into the cave and saw the Ochus all jumping on top of and tearing at the sand fish - it looked like a massacre. He noticed that Eikan had crafted those creatures to such perfection that even their insides were a convincing illusion; there was meat and organs and everything. Carmen quickly ran away.

"We did it!" Marcus yelled when they finally passed the cave. "You two magicians are simply amazing, I have to admit."

"Don't mention it," Carmen replied. "That was a close one, though. Anymore challenges in the desert past those monsters?"

"Not really. We're not far from our destination now, in fact."

They continue onwards throughout the rest of the day. By nightfall they had climbed a small hill overlooking the valley of Fertility below; there, surrounded by tall cliffs and mountains, was King Merialon's Tomb. They could not tell exactly how big it was, but it looked at least ten times the size of a mansion, carved of black stones and brick.

"We're here, finally," Carmen said.

"We'd best save the tomb raiding for tomorrow. First, after today's adventure, we need a good night's rest," Marcus suggested.

The party agreed, and for dinner, Eikan and Carmen once again ate two moon cakes each as well as a sandwich. Their provisions were now about a third of the way through, meaning that they had completed the first week of their journey - only two more weeks of adventuring left before they would completely run out of food and water.
 
"It's hard to believe we've already spent a week inside this world," Carmen said as he laid down to rest beside his friend.

"Not for me. I still hate this place, and wish that I was back on Earth," Eikan replied.

"I know." Carmen sighed, still feeling guilt for bringing the two of them onto this planet. At the same time, however, he enjoyed spending time with Eikan, a boy who he loved and hardly had the chance to talk to back on Earth. He looked over at his friend's pretty face and began to admire him with a lustful joy.

"What?" Eikan asked when he noticed his friend's strange stare.

"Nothing," Carmen replied with a hidden smile. "Goodnight."

***

[Neko Desu]

Chapter V

The Tomb of Merialon: a towering structure built of brick and stone; at least twice as big as a medieval castle, and standing well over a hundred feet tall. It was surrounded by huge mountains, part of which it had been built into, so the tomb was mostly underground; its ancient entrance passage (located out in the desert) was lined with massive stone pillars that led towards a flight of marble stairs - the party's apprehending destination.

"Makes you think," Carmen inquired, "What kind of a king was this 'Merialon' to receive such a grand burial place? And if so, then why was it built in the middle of a desert?"

"Merialon was called the Herald-king; for it was he that sailed east from the western continent of Andalia to reach this land, and his sons were the great men that traveled further south to build the Kingdom of Rutham. No doubt you two are one of his long-descended children," Marcus replied.

Yet another pleasant lie that we have to cope with, Carmen thought to himself.

"It is an honour, then. Such a bother we have to raid his tomb."

"Surely, there must be a reason for your master to send you on this quest, though - a wise magician wouldn't want you to desecrate an honoured king's tomb just to obtain some treasure. What exactly are you here for?"

"To acquire one of the items needed in order to forge the Sun Mirror. The Arcane Steel it is called - and it supposedly belongs to the armor of an undead knight, named Feinras."

"That sounds like quite a rather dangerous task indeed. I will help you if I can. Anyways, shall we enter?"

They walked up the stairs leading to the entrance of the tomb, and found themselves standing in front of a large gray door that was forged of some unknown metal. There was no visible handle or lock upon this door to indicate that it could be opened.

"Marcus, aren't you here for the treasure inside this place?" Eikan asked when they stopped in front of the tomb's entrance.

"Indeed, I am. But for you two magicians I would not expect so. That was why I had asked earlier."

Eikan did not respond to that, but rather watched as Carmen observed the door; he had put his right hand upon it, and was now slightly tracing his finger across the intricate designs that had been carved on the door's metal frame.

"What are you doing?" Eikan asked.

"I am...." A smile spread across Carmen's lips, but it quickly faded away; he spun around suddenly to look at the others with an apprehensive look around his face. "I'm sorry, guys, but it can't be opened."

"What!?" Marcus responded. "Are you sure?"

"I meant by physical means, that is."

Carmen closed his eyes, and then slowly leaned his back against the door, earning him some very weird looks from his two companions. Then the door behind him suddenly crashed open as an earthquake-like vibration shook the walls of the tomb; rocks began to fall from the cliffs that surrounded the massive structure, one of them a large boulder that crashed down upon a nearby stone pillar - another landed right behind the party, and it rolled down the marble staircase.

"Well. How did you do that?" Eikan asked; he had jumped a bit when all these boulders came falling down around him.

"Magic, of course. I already knew how to do fire and air - so, earth was next. When I put my hand upon that door, I tried to 'feel' the solid stone comprising it, and once I became connected enough with the 'earth' that the walls were made of, all I had to do was just use magic to force the door open. Little did I know, however, that there was no door - it was actually just a part of the tomb's walls, a trick to confuse us into thinking that it was an entrance!"

"So you basically just blew down one of the walls of this tomb," Eikan replied. "No wonder it caused that earthquake."

"Yeah. I won't do it again, especially once we're inside the tomb, of course."

The party braced themselves and took out their weapons before entering. The inside of the tomb was surprisingly bright and well-lit; but the place was also absolutely huge. They found themselves standing at the entrance of a massive hallway, with a ceiling over a hundred feet tall; the walls of this room were filled with torches that still continued to burn even after all these years (they were of course, magic). Up ahead, past the entrance hall, was a door that led into another room, and it was quite far away - appearing almost the distance of a quarter mile.

"Well, here we are," Carmen said. "I hope we can at least make it out of here alive."

"We'd best proceed with caution. Ancient tombs such as these are usually filled with fiendish traps and dangerous monsters, in order to ward off meddling burglars such as us."

"What are the chances that we'll even be able to find any treasure inside this huge place, anyways?"

"We're not here for the treasure, remember?" Carmen replied. "Let's just stay positive and hope for the best - otherwise, there's no point even trying to accomplish our perilous task inside this place."

The party took a few step forwards down the hallway, expecting something to come out at any second to kill them. When nothing happened, they continued onwards, this time a bit more casually - except for Eikan, whose face appeared extremely pessimistic in the farce of their current situation.

Turns out he was right to worry.

As the group stepped out farther down the hallway, they suddenly realized that they were standing upon a stone bridge - for the walls here to their left and right gave way and instead became a ledge; beyond them were chasms: a fall of seemingly infinite height into a dark abyss of no return.

It was then that they were attacked by the tomb's first trap. There came suddenly a deep rumbling sound from both ends of the hallway, and as the party turned around they saw something that immediately set them off the edge - the walls of the tomb, specifically the two at both ends of the passage, were alive and moving towards them. Carved upon the wall that was currently closer (which came from the south end of the hallway) was a huge beast with many red claw-like legs; also it had a grotesque snarling face, and was covered in yellow scales.

"Damn!" Marcus yelled. "We've fallen into a trap."

Eikan crouched down onto the ground and closed his eyes out of sheer terror; Carmen felt like doing the same, for neither boy had ever been in such a dangerous situation before (except for maybe their encounter with the wolves inside the forest). Instead, however, Carmen raised his sword high over his head and looked nervously at the monstrous wall that was slowly advancing its way towards him.

"A Demon Wall..." Marcus whispered. "In times past, such practices were not uncommon. To seal a creature inside unbreakable objects (such as walls) through the art of dark magic, and then using those objects as traps to guard sacred places such as tombs."

"How are we supposed to defeat those things!?" Carmen asked.

"It is simple - we break down that wall completely." He turned towards Eikan, who was sitting on the ground with a helpless look upon his face. "Come! It won't do us any good if we sit here and idle. We have to fight our way through this!"

Marcus grabbed an arrow from his quiver and notched it to his bow; he then turned towards the wall that was approaching them from the northern end of the hallway. "Follow me. We'll go break down that one, so that we can advance onwards."

Eikan now looked frustrated. "What are you saying?" He asked as he stood up, grabbing his spear with both hands. "We can't just destroy an entire wall using a bunch of simple weapons!"

"Well, we have magic, don't we?" Carmen said as he turned in the direction of the archer. "If we work together, that stupid wall won't be able to do anything to stop us."

"Optimistic, aren't you?" Eikan said with a sigh. "You do realize how serious our situation is, right? It'll only take about ten minutes for these two walls to close in on us - and then, we'll be dead!"

"That's why I'm not going to waste a single second taking it down," Carmen replied. "Now, let's go!"

The two boys ran after the Archer, who was standing in front of the northern wall, slowly shooting down the demon's legs one by one with his arrows.

"I can't do this all by myself!" Marcus yelled as one of the demon's claw-like feet struck him in the chest, hurling him backwards. Carmen quickly helped him up.

Observing the wall more closely, Carmen began to feel pure terror well up within him once again. The demon's face was fixed in a twisted, sickly-looking (and extremely sadistic) smile inside the stone that it had been sealed upon; only the creature's legs were mobile, which were slowly crawling to bring the heavy wall forward.

"I don't like the look of this..." Carmen said. He closed his eyes and took a step backwards, beginning to conjure up another spell to try and halt the advance of the demon wall. Focusing together his emotions into one bright mental bursting point, like a "well" of magic just waiting for its release, Carmen thrust his hands forward and suddenly a large ball of flame appeared, consuming three of the creature's legs and setting them on fire.

"Well done!" Marcus yelled as he shot another arrow forward, this time aiming for the demon's eye. Unfortunately, it did not - could not, in fact - pierce through the wall's solid stone veil.

"I wish I could help," Eikan said, "But I don't know how. We might be able to stop the legs from moving, but that doesn't mean we can actually break down this wall."

"One thing at a time!" Carmen replied. He raised his sword and prepared to defend himself as four spindly legs propped itself up to attack him. Remembering his old fencing techniques, the boy was able to counter the demon's assaults surprisingly well, though of course - he was only up against a bunch of weak little legs, and not even a (real) competent swordsman. Carmen quickly sliced all of them off when he got the chance.

"Alright, that's the last of them," Marcus said as he took a step back, noting that the demon had stopped crawling forward. "Now we have to think of a way to destroy this wall completely."

Eikan looked behind him and noted that the other Demon Wall, which was coming from the south end of the hallway (where they previously were before) had now crossed about half of the passage's length - it would only take a few more minutes before the thing would arrive to crush them completely. Beginning to feel utterly panicked, Eikan raised his Javelin and threw it forward at the immobile wall in front of him, hoping to strike it down; this caused a small crack to appear on the demon's face, where the tip of the spear had struck (and also embedded itself) into the solid stone.

"Eikan!" Carmen suddenly yelled. "I've got an idea. Quick, find some way to stall - or distract - that wall!"

"Which one!?" Eikan yelled back as he frantically looked around him for another weapon.

"The one in front of us!"

"Why? We already took down its legs! If there's anything that we should worry about, it's the wall that's coming towards us from behind!"

"Just do it!" Carmen rushed forward and suddenly thrust both of his hands upon the Demon Wall in front of him. Instead of feeling solid earth (with his mind), he felt a dark, demonic presence, seething with anger and hatred inside the stone; the creature in there was obviously alive, having been awakened from its restless sleep by the magics that bound it to act upon seeing intruders enter the tomb.

"What are you doing?" Marcus asked. He was beginning to sound frantic as well.

"I'm trying to break down this Demon Wall, the same way that I broke down the entrance 'door' of this tomb earlier. All I have to do is 'feel' the element of Earth within this stone, but currently the demon sleeping inside is interrupting my spell. That's why I need you guys to distract it."

Eikan nodded; he looked around him and found two of the magical ever-burning torches that were placed upon the walls of this hallway. Using his specialty in magic, he quickly "moved" two of these torches up into the air and then threw them down upon the demon's face. Although solid stone could not catch on fire, since these torches were magical they were neither extinguished; rather, they caused a rather nasty burn to appear upon the wall, blackening the demon's head with soot and ash. This seemed to cause enough pain to the creature to weaken its dark influence, allowing Carmen to finally "sense" the earth element within the rock that his hands were touching; then, the magician unleashed his spell, having focused enough of his mind's energy upon completely breaking down the Earth before him, and massive cracks began appearing across the wall.

There seemed to ring across the air the sound of an unheard roar, a vibration so mighty and terrible, and yet dull due to the demon's inability to scream when inside the stone; Carmen took a step back and the wall before him completely shattered. Both Marcus and Eikan were astonished by what the young magician had done; he had saved them once again by using the same trick that he had performed earlier to break down the entrance 'door' of the tomb. There wasn't an earthquake this time, though, for the Demon Wall had not been connected to the rest of the tomb and thus its destruction did not affect the entire structure; rather only the hallway in front of the party, which was now covered in ruined stone. They did not hesitate, however, to immediately climb over the pieces of this broken-down wall to reach the other end of the hallway, where there was a door to take them out of this accursed room and into the next. 

"We barely got out of that one," Marcus said, panting and struggling for breath as they closed the door behind them. Being older and more physically fit, the man recovered quickly and then took a few steps forward to observe the room, assuming position as the party's leader once again. "It looks like we're now in a maze of sorts." Instead of large, open space, this room appeared to be full of winding corridors and staircases, as well as many dark, ominous-looking passageways. 

"You're not seriously still thinking of obtaining the treasure, are you?" Eikan asked. "We just survived an encounter with a Demon Wall! The only thing on my mind right now is getting out of here."

"Where else can we go?" Marcus responded. "Forward is now our only option. The room behind us is blocked by that other Demon Wall, who was coming in from the south."

Carmen groaned as he sat up. "Well, let's just keep going and hope we manage to find some way outta here."

The party continued onwards, heading down a rather straightforward corridor before suddenly arriving at a dead end. Here they could either turn left and continue down this hallway, or go right and up a small flight of stairs. More interesting to the party, however, was the large statue of a stone figure standing in front of them; in his right hand he held a torch, and inscribed upon a metal plate beneath the statue were the following words:

"Wandering traveler, brave in his strength -
for wall of Demons you have bested, but in mind,
What power holds you sway?

You who have been blinded by material greed,
lust not this tomb's mortal wealth, and turn back
From death's inescapable grasp.

You who believe you are worthy, 
Wisdom you must now prove. This flame, take,
A guide through these halls of darkness,
And place upon the torch that lights truth."

"What's it asking us to do?" Carmen asked.

"We're to take the torch in this statue's hand and use it as our 'guide' through the passages up ahead, which will likely be completely dark. But I am a bit perplexed by the final line: 'And place upon the torch that lights truth.'" 

Eikan sighed and struck his face with the palm of his hand. "I can't believe we're actually going through with this. Any second now, some trap's going to descend upon us and we're all going to die."

"Will you stop being so pessimistic!?" Carmen replied to his friend's whining. "We just have to be very careful from now on. Do you want me to hold your hand?" 

Eikan looked at Carmen a bit strangely when he said that. "I'm not a child, you know."

"Well, I was just trying to reassure you."

"Get out of the way," Marcus' voice came from behind them.

"Huh!?"

As soon as the man took the torch from the statue, a massive sword - which the stone figure had apparently been concealing behind its left hand - fell forward, nearly striking Carmen and Eikan down as some mechanism from within the statue activated the trap. Eikan jumped back and indeed, grabbed onto Carmen's hand.

"See? There are traps everywhere inside this place!"

"Looks like we got lucky with that one," Carmen responded. "Do you need a hug?" (He was, of course, 'playing' with Eikan right now - and in more ways than one).

Eikan now looked annoyed at his friend. "Maybe later, when something tries to kill us again."

Marcus observed the two passages around him that they could now take; both looked equally as mysterious and as unpleasant.

"Well? Left or right?"

"I really don't know," Carmen replied. "Maybe the 'flame' of truth from that statue is supposed to be guide us on the right way?"
 
"I don't see how it could," Marcus said. "Well, how about we just pick a path, and then move on?"

"The path that we pick might end up leading us to our dooms, though..." Eikan responded pessimistically.

"Then we better be careful from now on. So, since there are three of us here, why not we have a vote? I say we go left. How about you two?"

"I don't know," Carmen said. "Why left?"

"Just a hunch. I've never liked staircases, anyways."

"Fine. Then we agree to go left."

The Archer nodded; he took the lead, being the one carrying the torch, and the party proceeded in single file behind him with Eikan in the middle and Carmen at the back. It was in fact, extremely dark in the passages up ahead, for no other light was lit in the current hallway save that of their own. Both boys began to feel extremely scared, afraid that something from out of the darkness would come and attack them, or that they would step into a trap if they didn't die at the hands of some fiendish beast first. Carmen began to feel particularly paranoid of the walls surrounding them - he had not yet recovered from his experience with the two Demon Walls that had tried to crush the group about an hour earlier.

Eventually they arrived at yet another set of stairs, and this time it was the only way that they could go without turning back. Bracing themselves for some incoming trap, the party slowly made their way up the stone steps until, surprisingly, they reached the second floor of the tomb without any harm; here, they passed through yet another door (Eikan was freakishly afraid of what awaited them on the other side), and now the group found themselves standing inside a very large room that was connected to three other passageways.

*