1 v 1 Argentum Astrum vs. The Bandit Brotherhood

Either this man was naturally dead in the head, or the drugs were hitting him rather hard. His words were all over the place, hitting everything and nothing. He even offered to get her flowers! What, did he think this was some kind of date? Did he think that she would not adjust the position of her fingers ever so slightly and push against the artery running through her neck and cut off the blood supply to his brain? She could not remember the last time she had run into someone as mentally retarded as him. Even Jared—the unpredictable pragmatic thief that he was—was not an idiot and would know a bad situation when he was thrown into one. This guy just seemed to either not care, or he had no freaking idiot how much shit had shovelled himself into. He didn’t even know what Prevalida looked like. How was supposed to find some ancient and long lost weapon that he didn’t even seem too sure existed.

This was a gamble.

She could kill him now and be done with this place and its glowing light and howling birds that his addled mind thought were butterflies of all things—he must have completely succumbed to the hallucinogenic—or she could search for this weapon with him. In the end, she supposed she could kill him just as easily once they found the weapon, or found nothing. He may not even be expecting it from her once she teamed up with him, after all, then she’d be his ally and his comrade. He wouldn’t be expecting the sharp pain of a knife through the soft flesh of his neck or through his ribs and into his neck. Maybe, if she felt like being generous she’d kill him quickly and with mercy, sparing the majority of the pain she knew she could inflict upon him.

Against her better judgement, against the reasoning that told her she should just kill him and be done with, Kyo began to back off. Her ice blue eyes remained locked on his brown ones, which looked as black as coal in the darkness. Her fingers slid away from the pressure point on his neck and left his body completely as her left hand sheathed her remaining blade. Reaching up, she grabbed the tight mass of black material covering the lower half of her face and jerked it down, leaving it to rest against her neck.

“Tetsoma Kyosku,” She said to him, her voice no more friendly than it had been before, “leader of The Bandit Brotherhood.” Normally respect and common courtesy demanded that she should bow when introducing herself. But this was not such a situation and would leave her momentarily unguarded in front of him.

Reaching up, the ninja swept back the uneven strands of her raven black hair out of her face and allowing him to get a proper look at her. She had no fear of him knowing her name or her face, she was still rather positive he may not make it out of these ruins alive, whether or not they found this fabled weapon.

“Here’s the deal, Lore, you’re going to find this weapon and I’m being generous enough to help. And if by the end of this little mission I like you enough, I might not kill you. But if you make one wrong move I will not hesitate to open up your throat. Now, I suggest you get to work before I change my mind.”

She took a step away from him, her presence no longer keeping him pinned against the crumbling and centuries old wall.

((Bunnying approved))

“Tetsoma Kyosku,” Ceidon repeated, sliding down the ruin to his feet. When he landed, the young adventurer became extremely light headed. “Sounds like candy…sweet delicious candy…” Ceidon trailed off when the butterfly that had wooed earlier took to the sky. After Ceidon watched it for a moment, he began to question his classification of the creature. It was very large for a butterfly and its motioned seemed far too fluid. Suddenly the thing swooped down to the ground and grabbed a mouse with its mouth, starling Ceidon. When it flew back up, the it’s brown wings shimmered.

“That’s it!” Ceidon yelled. His voice echoed through the ruins. “The answer is up there, not down here.” The adventurer pointed to the sky. “The dwarfs like down, that’s why the other archeologists went into the caverns.” Ceidon wasn’t even sure he was making sense to himself so he attempted to clarify for Kyosku. “The weapon is up because dwarfs don’t like up.” Without another word, Ceidon jumped into the air stretching his hand out as far as it could go. When he landed, he lost his balance and fell hard to the ground. A moment later he stood up, feeling incredibly dizzy. He turned to face the Kyosku’s, all three of them. “What the hell is happening to me?” he asked.

“You’ve been infected by a mild hallucinogenic,” the Kyosku’s said in chorus. “Its affects should fade in a few minutes.” The ninjas briefly looked to the sky. “I don’t see anything up there but the lights. You are imagining things,” they said coldly.

Before the ninjas finished speaking, Ceidon started jumping into the air again, reaching for some sort of invisible object. “On the contrary,” he said, somewhat coherently. “Powerful artifacts are usually buried and protected by some ancient magic or creature. The kind of stuff Prevalida would react to.” He jumped into the air once more. “But the earth often blocks the magical residue from reaching the surface. Think about it, if every artifact left a magical trail, the strongest mages on Althanas would always know where to find them,” Ceidon explained.

“You believe the source of the magic is in the sky, then?” a Kyosku asked.

Ceidon nodded, but did not directly respond to the ninja’s question. Instead, Ceidon pointed to the top of the tall ruins. “I want to go up there,” he said. Ceidon dashed over to one of the ruins he’d earlier called a guard tower. “Would you please check the other one,” he asked Kyosku. When he arrived at the ruin, Ceidon began to climb. He lost his balance several times, most likely due to the hallucinogenic, but somehow managed not to fall. The adventurer was happy to find that the ruin could support his weight at the top. For several moments, Ceidon searched for any strange markings or apparatus’ on the ruin, but found nothing. He looked over to the other tower and saw only one Kyosku. The others must have left. “Are you having any luck over there?” he yelled.

She didn’t like the idea of following his orders, even if it was more of a request than a demand placed upon her. There was something within her that rebelled against the thought of it and made her want tell him where to shove it and just how hard too. Not to mention for him to travel his own ass up the steps of the tower and find whatever it is he thought lay within. Sadly, she had to live with the fact that she had agreed to help him, which meant she couldn’t just stand around and do nothing. And since she was a killer and not an adventurer or a treasure hunter, she had to listen to him and whatever whacky bullshit he came up with in order to find this weapon supposedly hidden here.

Letting out a soft sigh, Kyosku began heading towards the tower he had indicated just as he disappeared into the other one. The moment she stepped foot inside her eyes were eclipsed into an almost complete darkness. Even her good vision was cut off and made her pause her advance. Carefully, she took a step forward and heard the crunch and grind of loose rocks and pebbles beneath her feet echo off walls that could only be a few feet from her. After a moment or two, she began to see the outline of the rough stones making up the walls and eventually the stairs.

Not wasting any time, the ninja began heading up the long flight of stairs, her nimble feet taking the crumbling and old steps two at a time. There was worry in the back of her mind that they may give way beneath her, but each of her lightly thudding steps seemed to fall on stable ground. Stones clanks and rattled as they fell from the crumbling steps and down to the solid ground now feet below her. The closer she got to the top of the tower, the more light began to filter in and allow her eyes to see the details and the crevices in the stones. It was coming from the blinking, green lights, the same eerie ones that Lore seemed so fascinated with. But still they could not cast away the darkest of shadows, making her climb tricky at best.

It didn’t take Kyo long to reach the top of the tower. The area was sparse and appeared to hold nothing within in. There was no ancient writing that would guide them and no easy to find hidden doors or whatever the hell treasure hunters looked for in places such as these.

When he called over to her, she said nothing at first. Her night sharp eyes continued to look along the floor and the walls, for something, anything that would help them in this seemingly foolhardy task. Finally, after a moment or two she spotted it, an anomaly that broke the pattern of rough stone carved and worn from centuries of weather. Moving towards it, the ninja knelt down and ran the tips of her fingers across the surface. She could feel the remainder of what had most likely been an extremely decorative and beautiful carving at one point or another, but now only the bare bones seemed to remain. From what was left, she thought it looked like a dragon, but she could not be sure.

“I...think I found something.” Her slightly accented voice lost its cold disposition as she gazed upon the carving, her fingers still softly caressing it. “It looked like the carving of a dragon in the corner where the north and west walls meet.”

As she continued to run her fingers across it, the rock shifted over the area of its heart. Pausing for a moment, she pushed harder against the stone more than surprised when it actually gave way to the pressure of her hand.

Click.

Her entire body tensed and she drew her hand away from the carving as her wide, blue eyes began to look around frantically. Then the sound of grinding stone filled her ears and she watched as part of the wall began to move away. On instinct, she jumped back her mind immediately racing and thinking it may be some kind of trap. She had heard plenty of tales about adventurers dying in the ruins of ancient cities because of old traps set to discourage thieves. But, no arrows shot forth at her. No magical charm tries to destroy her and nothing even remotely dangerous seemed to come from the strange panel in the wall.

“Umm...I touched its heart and it revealed...something.”

She had no idea what she was dealing with here, so even though she hated to do it, she waited for further instructions from Lore.

((Bunnying approved))

When Kyosku responded, Ceidon felt his heart jump. “You what?” he called out excitedly. The adventurer examined the northwest corner of his tower, but could not find a similar carving. “Wait, they could be opposites!” With a renewed excitement, he turned around only to find that the southeast corner of the tower was gone. It had been completely blasted away. “Drats,” Ceidon said, starting to pace.

There was nothing unique about his tower. It had absolutely nothing like what Kyosku had described. For a brief moment, Ceidon was jealous that she had found something before he did. It was his theory after all. “There’s nothing like that over here,” Ceidon yelled to the other tower, “What did yours reveal?”. Feeling angry, he kicked the northeast corner of the ruin, causing a large stone section to fall to the ground. When he put his foot back down, Ceidon noticed something within the exposed cross section of the railing. “What’s this?” he asked.

Taken by curiosity, Ceidon kneeled down and reached into the cross section with his hands. It felt like some sort of lever. The adventurer fiddled around for awhile, moving the parts from one side to the other. Eventually, and probably by accident, the lever clicked and Ceidon heard a grinding noise. Suddenly, a bright glow illuminated the ground below. Ceidon quickly climbed back down the ruin and ran out towards the light. He astounded by what he saw. The switches had revealed an invisible glass panel above one of the ruins. The panel was adroitly crafted. There was a picture on it that looked like a giant iguana crying on top of a dwarf.

“Tetsoma Kyosku, you really need to see this,” he yelled. Eventually he turned around, surprised to see that the ninja was already next to him. “That was quick,” Ceidon said. “Anyway, there’s a picture of an iguana crying on the panel. What do you think it means?” The adventurer looked to the ninja, but she said nothing. Ceidon began to think out loud. “Everyone knows that the dwarfs were exterminated here. Maybe this is a warning to let people know they’ve stumbled across whatever blighted the dwarfs.” He put his hand on his chin. “Or maybe it’s telling us how to open it. Wait! I think the iguana is crying blood!”

Without saying another word, or thinking for that matter, Ceidon re-opened the cut on his right finger with the Prevalida shard. Grinning, the adventurer walked over to the panel, and touched it with his injured finger. The panel reacted to the blood, but not how Ceidon expected it to. Suddenly, it became electrically charged, sending unknown volts of electricity through his body. Ceidon was thrown to the ground like a rag doll. It took him a long moment to recover, but when he sat up his headache was gone and his vision was restored.

“Err…” he said to Kyosku, “why don’t you try it?”

The man really was an idiot.

He just walked right up to the panel, sliced his finger open and touched it thinking some mysterious and wonderful display of power was going to come forth. From his blood. As if there was anything special about it. He was only human after all and this had been a city dedicated to the dwarves, she was rather certain only the blood of a dwarf was going to do anything here. A human was just going to get electrocuted and then flung back a few feet onto his scrawny little ass and look up at his newest companion and tell her to do it with all the intelligence of an ant. Yeah, as if her brain was as addled as his.

Shaking her head, Kyosku approached the ornate and beautiful painting. She looked over the lines of ‘iguana’ and the dwarf as she came to a quick and simple conclusion.

“That’s a dragon you baka, not an iguana. And it’s not crying blood, it’s bleeding. The dwarf has clearly attack the dragon, didn’t you notice the discarded weapon in the corner of the drawing?”

If she went on the same line of thinking that Lore had, then it wasn’t dwarf blood that the panel wanted, it was the blood of a dragon. The problem was, dragons did not exactly come in ready supply in this area and she was not going to go hunt one down in order to get some. Not only would it be foolhardy but she well remembered the last time she had tracked down a dragon years ago under the pleading of some very scared villagers. Oddly enough, the dragon wasn’t a dragon at all but a human named Godhand Striker who had the ability to turn into a dragon. The same ability he had given to her...

“No...it couldn’t really work, could it?” She whispered softly to herself.

But maybe, just maybe it would. She was no true dragon, but having such an ability within her technically meant she had the blood of a dragon running through her veins. Looking down at the slightly tanned skin of her hand, Kyosku reached to her belt and slipped her fingers into one of the hard, leather pouches there. Wrapping her fingers around one of her shuriken, she sliced one of her fingers open with the tip of the star and then approached the panel. Knowing that if this didn’t work she was going to get a nice shock, the ninja took a deep breath and pressed her hand against the panel.

No streams of electricity raced through her body, sending shocks of pain along her muscles and sending her flying backwards. In fact, the presence of her blood only made the panel glow a gentle blue colour that hurt her night adjusted eyes. Furrowing her brows, Kyo turned her eyes and watched as a third tower literally appeared before the two of them. It was as if it was always there and she could understand why. It appeared to be made of some kind of glass or crystal, ornate and beautifully fired and carved and it reflected everything around it as if it were a giant, diffracting mirror.

It was breathtakingly beautiful and left her momentarily speechless as she gazed upon it. Until her lips parted to whisper, “Wow... it’s beautiful...”

“I guess not,” Ceidon whispered in response to Kyosku’s insult. The adventurer said nothing else, though, as he soon became captivated by the ninja’s actions. Disregarding what she just saw happen to him, Kyosku similarly wounded her hand and boldly touched the panel. But, instead of electrocuting and throwing her back, the panel responded by revealing a magnificent third tower. Ceidon quickly got to his feet, his eye brow lifted like a giddy school-boy.

“You did it,” he exclaimed. In his excitement, Ceidon neglected to wonder exactly how she done it, but those details really didn’t matter to him at the moment anyway. All that mattered is that he was right. The lights of Teria were a map, leading to this tower and its treasures. However, deep in his mind, Ceidon hoped the two hadn’t inadvertently unleashed something terrible on Althanas with their discovery either. “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Ceidon whispered to himself. He turned to the ninja. “Shall we?”

Ceidon slowly walked to the glass steps that lead into the tower. “One small step…” he said, but no sooner than he finished talking, the adventurer saw something odd. There were two more “guard towers” nearby. Upon further examination, it appeared that the glass tower was in the exact center of the four smaller ruins. In his adventures, Ceidon had discovered an odd correlation between old magic and symmetry. If there were four ruins, then it was likely that all four switches had to be pressed to make the glass tower appear. Had someone already discovered the secret of Teria, depressing only two of the switches on the way out? Their search had been uncharacteristically easy thus far. Was it possible that someone else had already rid the area of any traps or other dangers?

The adventurer decided not to tell Kyoshu his thoughts. If she felt that Ceidon were leading her on, he doubted she would exhibit the same mercy that she had before. Taking one step at a time, Ceidon ascended into the tower with the ninja at his heels. He was absolutely mesmerized by what he saw. In the foyer, a grand staircase wound several hundred stories to a visible apex. Everything around him was glass. From any single point he could see the ruins below him and the green lights dancing above him. Each time he took a step, the glass turned a hint of blue, revealing where to climb next.

Without speaking, Ceidon began to climb the grand staircase. At first it was rather uneventful as they were greeted by the same scenery and the same blue effect, but when he and Kyoshu were about halfway up the tower something marvelous happened. The glass walls on each side of the staircase transformed into a brilliant mural. The mural was made up of only white indentations, almost like snow had been plucked right from the sky. On the left side, the mural depicted an army of dwarfs conquering a horde of demons. In each section, one dwarf was holding a dark curved blade. On the right side, the mural depicted an army of humans conquering the dwarfs. In each section, one human was holding a glowing curved blade. It was strangely symmetrical, bringing Ceidon back to his earlier thoughts.

“How strange,” Ceidon commented. “What do you think it means?”

“My guess...” She said with a slight shrug, “is that it’s depicting two battles against opposing sides, not only in moral standing perhaps but in power as well. The humans are wielding a weapon of light and the Dwarves one of darkness, as if their very weaponry is a polar opposite. I would assume that one of the weapons shown here will be what we’re supposed to find, if it really exists and if it’s still there.” Heck, both of the weapons might actually exist within this tower. Now wouldn’t that be an interesting twist in things.

Kyo was not about to change her profession anytime soon, but she was actually enjoying this adventuring stuff. Not to mention it had been extremely easy up until this point. Where were all the traps, the monsters and the hidden riddles they had to figure out in order to claim this weapon? It appeared as if there were none, which was a worry in the back of her mind but since Lore was not mentioning it, she supposed this might be normal. After all, if her blood was enough to open the doorway to get them this far—and humans with the blood of dragons running through their veins were rare—she supposed it may just be enough to get them what they desired.

It didn’t take long to reach the top of the tower, just another minute or two of watching the intricate and beautiful battle as it continued to unfold before them. In the end, she was not sure who the victor was, though it appeared that both sides had been greatly destroyed by what had occurred and then there was no more. The ground looked more stable up here and it was not as see through as the rest of the tower. In fact, the world around her looks distorted and every step forward she took creating a shimmer and a ripple along the floor as if she were walking across a thin layer of water. The walls looked more stable here as well, as if the crystals or the glass this was made from had a slightly milky hew to it, which allowed them to become more visible to the eyes.

And the room wasn’t empty either.

Right away her eyes were drawn to the centre area where some kind of pedestal or altar lay. Here, the glass was blackened and murky but the display that seemed to have at point in time held something was now empty. Had the weapon already been claimed? The other thing she noticed was a tall, standing mirror that faced towards the altar. Just like everything else in this place it was quite ornate and seemed to have the figure of a dragon swirling along the top of it and gripping along the sides of the mirror. Its head was pointing towards the centre and it appeared to be reaching out towards it, as if attempting to grasp something in its claws.

Moving passed Lore; Kyo walked over to the altar and gently reached out, allowing her fingers to touch upon the cool glass. There was energy present here, she could feel it ripple up through her fingers and into her arm, calling out to something inside of her but she didn’t know what. Turning towards the mirror, the ninja was not surprised when she saw her reflection starring back at her, covered in her concealing ninja outfit, which left barely any skin showing at all. What did surprise her though was what her hand rested upon. Instead of the empty altar and stand there was a weapon laying within it, sheathed and ready to be plucked from its resting place by whoever had the ability to do so.

Feeling her brows rise, she looked back at the empty altar she was standing in front of and then once more at the mirror.

“Lore, go check out the mirror.”

Surprisingly, the adventurer did as she told him to and he walked over to the mirror. She watched as his eyes slid across its surface and eventually came to rest upon the same weapon she had seen.

“Can you touch it?”

He hesitated this time, perhaps remembering what had happened last time when he had blindly touched something. However, there was no shock that rent through his body as his fingers lightly caressed the cool glass of the mirror. In fact, nothing happened.

“It’s just a mirror...” he grumbled.

He stood there for a moment or two, his eyes glancing at the weapon he had come here to retrieve and yet seemed unable to grasp upon now. Then he turned and moved towards her and the altar she stood in front of. Stepping back from it, the ninja gave him full access to it and whatever treasures and secrets that lay within or upon it. He was the expert after all, even if he would not have been able to make it this far without her. Turning her back to him—even though every logical synapse within her brain told her not to—Kyosku approached the mirror. Her eyes trailed across the delicate, silver and tarnished framing that surrounding it. Watching as it moulded into scale and claw and became the leg of a dragon and then the body and finally the head. Reaching out, she ran her fingers along the cool metal and then proceeded to caress the hard and unforgiving pane of glass. Only as the tips of her fingers touched it, the glass shifted and moved as if it were water and it was trying to draw her hand.

With a sudden jerk, she pulled her hand back and looked down at it. There was no damage and nothing seemed to be missing. When she turned her ice blue eyes back to the mirror, it looked normal once more and the waves and ripples of distortion had disappeared leaving her with a perfect reflection. Confused, she turned her head to look at Lore, as her mouth opened to say something but her voce seemed to stall instead.

((Bunnying and 'post edit' approved))

Ceidon did not see Kyoshu interact with the mirror. He was too busy trying to sort out another mystery. “Hey, come look at this,” the adventurer said. “It looks like something’s been carved onto the surface of this display. It says “Hikari no Ashigaru.” Ceidon gave a puzzled looked. “What the hell is a Hikari?” he asked.

“It’s a name,” the ninja mumbled. Apparently, she hadn’t left the mirror.

“A name,” Ceidon repeated. With a frown, Ceidon glanced at the mirror. He saw himself standing next to a dark curved blade. When he touched the display, his reflection made it seem as though he was grasping the weapon. His hand became warm, but when he looked down, he was touching nothing but the metallic surface of the display. “What do you think it means?” Ceidon asked.

The ninja did not respond, so Ceidon ignored her and started pacing about the room.

A weapon was clearly visible, though Ceidon doubted that it was real. Magical mirrors tended to show a person what they wanted to see rather than what was actually being reflected. Besides, the adventurer couldn’t ignore the possibility that this Hikari no Ashigaru, if he was indeed a person, had already recovered the weapon. The evidence for prior discover was compelling: there was the carving on the display and their expedition had been noticeably simple. It was like someone had already offset any traps and solved any puzzles. Ceidon stopped pacing near the top of the staircase.

“That’s it!” Ceidon exclaimed, running down the stairs. “The murals depict two weapons,” he said to Kyoshu, though she might not have been listening. “On one side, a dark weapon is being used to vanquish demons. On the other, a light weapon is being used to exterminate the dwarfs. There are two swords here!” Ceidon ranted like a school boy.

“Light and Dark, good and evil. When the two swords were placed together they created a neutral equilibrium. The lights of Teria must have started when Hikari no Ashigaru took the one sword, leaving the other unchecked.” Ceidon stopped suddenly. “But that doesn’t explain why the lights only appear when they do,” he put his hand on his chin. "or why Hikari was unable to recover both weapons..." Something wasn't right, causing Ceidon to feel compelled to check on Kyoshu.

When he arrived back in the display room, he was shocked at what he saw. The ninja had ‘entered’ into the mirror and was slowly moving towards the blade. She appeared merely as a reflection to him. “Wait!” he called out to her. “Don’t take it!"

Ice. It felt like she was being encased in ice.

She could feel it cut through her clothes with a sharpness and precision better than any blade ever had. It pierced her skin and worked its way into her muscles and her body and made her entire feeling shiver and tense and desperately clutch at itself trying to keep warm. Each step she took inside of the mirror world seemed to take forever and there was a pull on her extremities, making it difficult to move. It felt like trying to walk upstream in a fast moving river when all she wanted to do was go with the flow and allow it to carry her wherever it wanted. But doing that would mean death in such freezing temperatures as these and Kyo had no desire to die, not yet anyway and not in such a dishonourable way.

The mirror world was exactly the same and yet different from the real world. The altar was in the same place, only opposite and the glass was not as see-through here. She knew there must be the same ruins on this side as the other, but she could barely make them out through the slightly cloudy mass of glass and what she did, did not look like ruins. In fact, it looked like the tall buildings of a still standing civilization.

With a waning determination that seemed to slowly being sapped from her very body like the warmth within it, Kyosku began moving towards the sword. The shouts of Lore she could not hear, they sounded like muffled cries, so she ignored him. When he had turned his back to her and walked over to the mural, she had ignored him and entered the mirror despite her better judgement telling her it may be the last thing she ever did. But she was not about to let the weapon slip through her grip when it was right in front of her and he did not have the ability to take it, but she did.

Finally, when she reached the altar, Kyo wrapped her shaking fingers around the black sheath of the weapon and picked it up, clutching it to her shivering body.

That wasn’t too hard.

She still had to get back to the mirror though, before she turned into a frozen ninja. Before she could even turn her head though, her ears caught the sound of grinding and cracking glass. With a jerk, she turned her head and looked at the mirror, watching as a small crack quickly began to grow larger and spread across the surface, distorting the imagine of Lore on the other side. Then another appeared and another, leaving a spider-web like trail across her and Kyo know she only had moments if even.

Pulling on the reserved of her waning strength, the ninja began heading back to the mirror as fast as she could, even as this world tugged and pulled at her and tried to keep her there. She pushed forward, her blue eyes watching as glass drew closer and cracks continued to spread. With less than a few feet between her and her only escape, Kyosku tensed her legs and jumped towards the mirror. She felt her body pass through it more than she saw it as the warmth night air began cover her ice cold skin. Then she slammed against the hard and unforgiving glass ground, eliciting a small grunt from her parted lips.

She stayed there for a moment. Catching her bearings and allowing the feeling to return to her fingers and her face. Then she softly groaned and began crawling to her feet rather slowly.

No matter how loud Ceidon yelled, Kyoshu didn’t seem to hear him. It was almost like she was in another universe. Desperate to get her attention, the adventurer threw the Prevalida shard he’d been holding at the mirror. At first it did nothing. The shard merely hit the glass and then fell harmlessly to the ground. After a moment, however, a large crack appeared in the glass where the metal had struck it. “Oh shit.” Ceidon yelled. “Get out of there!”

Ceidon could only watch in shock as the ninja struggled back through the room. Each step she took seemed move slower and slower while the crack grew larger and larger. It was going to be close. When she finally emerged with the sword in tow, Ceidon ran to her side. He had so many things to tell her that he couldn’t decide where to begin. As he helped her up, he felt a strange feeling grow in the pit of his stomach. It was like he was suddenly hungry. Eventually the hunger told him what to say first. “What the hell were you thinking? Now there is no way to put it back.”

Surprised by his tone of voice, Ceidon corrected himself. “I mean, you could have gotten yourself killed. How the hell did you get in there?” Just as he asked the question, the pieces finally fit together in his mind. The emblem in the ruin, the symbol on the panel, the mirror in the tower: each had something to do with dragons. The adventurer jumped back from the ninja. “You’re…you’re a dragon aren’t you?” Ceidon stepped back again. “Why are you here? You tried to kill me…what do you want?”