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Turned On	By : blackwaltz0 Category: +M through R > Phantasy Star Views: 2172 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Phantasy Star, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 19
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Lassic's throne room was the very core of the Air Castle, buried deep and buried secret, foul and malignant like a cancer attached to a heart. Light was low and the air was thick and smoky, acrid, tainted by a wide canal of molten lava which bordered the room, glowing a low orange-yellow and crusted in black. That was the source of the light, the smell and the heat.

The over-warm temperature caused their skin to prickle and Kyra had to cover her mouth and nose with her hand, waiting and hoping urgently that she would get used to the sensation. Chaz walked ahead of the rest of the team and had a very cautious look around, prepared for an attack or an ambush should it arrive. The room was certainly large enough to fight in, though he didn't like the look of that lava and the ceiling was astoundingly high; he couldn't even see the roof for the darkness. The spiraling nature of the corridors outside made perfect sense now, they coiled around this main chamber like a two-headed serpent protecting a giant egg.

All in all the heart of the Air Castle felt dead, like a tomb, but also waiting, anticipating; a ghost ready to rise from its grave when the time was right. There was a box waiting for them in the middle of the room. There didn't seem to be anything special or different about it, just the same old thing they saw hundreds of times before in previous dungeons or caves. Maybe that was what put the team of five on edge, because it was just so� well, ordinary.

This was hardly the time or the place for sniffing out hidden treasure. They were here to fight against an evil tyrant and recover the eclipse torch. Chaz sheathed his sword and moved up to the chest hesitantly, his four friends right behind him. He had a slight idea of this, but� "This has to be a trap." He said to the others. After the physical torture of his servants and the mental torture in the corridors why not try one last trap to see how it would go?

He looked to Rune. The esper seemed grim. To his senses it felt like the room was watching them, peering inwards, looking at him specifically. He felt exposed but there was nothing they could do about it, they had already come this far already. "Eh, it's possible. It seems obvious enough to be a trap, but if Lassic won't appear until it's sprung what else can we do? Go ahead, open it up and step back." He shrugged, lightly scratching at the bandages wrapped around his head.

The hunter didn't like Rune's blasé attitude towards him risking his neck. If he fell though a trap door or the box released deadly poison gas then he would be very upset and grumpy for the rest of the night, if he wasn't dead already. "How about this? You open it up and you step back. You seem to know more about Lassic than any of us anyway." He suggested firmly.

"Hell no! You're the leader. Go ahead, lead." Rune protested with a smile.

"Would you like me to open it for the both of you?" Wren offered helpfully, hoping to defuse the argument before it took root and grew. That was mainly his purpose here in the group anyway, aside from piloting the Landale he was their yellow mining canary. He could survive something that would otherwise kill any of his weaker teammates.

But that was hardly fair. Just because Wren was built to be virtually indestructible didn't mean it was alright to put him into dangerous situations when it was not his business. Chaz was the leader, not Wren, so the point position was up to him.

"It's alright, I'll do it." He sighed overly dramatically, slumping his shoulders. "If something happens to me you know what to do, Kyra can be my next of kin. She can have all of my earthly possessions when I'm gone."

Rika laughed softly and smiled, instantly brightening up the rather dark mood. Everything about this pit at the base of the Air Castle projected darkness and gloom. "Aw, can I at least have your sleeping bag when you're gone? It's much warmer than mine."

"Rika!" Chaz exclaimed, aghast.

"Just hurry up and open the box," Kyra pressed, grabbing Chaz by the shoulder and pushing him forward a bit, "we don't have all night."

"Rune was right, you girls are evil�" The blond boy grumbled as he stepped up to the box and knelt down in front of it. His four comrades wisely moved back, preferably standing behind one another. Chaz felt nervous, but it also felt rather exciting and empowering. He wanted to call Lassic out into the open, he wanted to be the one the slay him, and, despite their silly cowardice, he trusted that should anything bad happen to him the others would jump in and help. They wouldn't just stand back and watch.

Nothing else to do but open the box! Chaz wasn't too confident that it was going to be an early birthday present. It was unlocked and the latches unclasped smoothly enough, he raised the lid up an inch or two and then paused, mentally preparing himself for what might happen. Chaz took a deep breath, leaned back and turned his face to the side, then with one swift movement he flipped the lid up and opened the chest for all to see.

From there stretched a taut, expectant moment of silence. Nothing seemed to happen. Chaz unscrewed his eyes and turned back to the chest, cautiously peering inside. The others heard his sudden, amazingly relieved laugh. He stuck both his hands inside with no fear. "Guys, it's the torch! I've found it! The torch is in here!" And he pulled it out of the chest and stood up, whirling around to show his friends.

None of them had any clear idea of what the torch actually looked like. They had seen it briefly from afar, while the hot-air puffing bishop of Gumbious had shouted at them for the blasphemy of wanting to take it out of their sacred temple. The torch that Chaz held in his hands was a little fire sitting and burning brightly in a clear glass bowl, fitting within the boy's palms snugly. Like the torches which had adorned the lower corridors of the Air Castle it burned brightly without kindling. The orange flames bravely illuminated their shadows within the half-dark.

Rika, Kyra and Rune gathered around the young hunter and examined his find. Wren quietly hung back and kept up a good lookout for danger. The eclipse torch was such a trifling, small thing, it was amazing to consider just how much trouble it had caused with its holy little flame. "But you know," Chaz said to himself out loud as Rika leaned over to examine the artifact, "it doesn't even feel very warm. The glass is still nice and cool."

Rune was frowning at Chaz and unwilling to voice the reason why just yet when Wren suddenly spoke up and offered his opinion. The others listened to him, mostly because it was unusual for Wren to talk without a prompt but generally one pays quite a bit of attention to the giant android holding the cannon. "That does not compute. A flame cannot exist if it is not converting energy to heat." Anything else would disrupt the laws of physics as they were.

"Maybe it's magic?" Chaz offered helpfully as he steeled himself and dipped his thumb into the flame. He had seen Alys do this before as a bit of a parlor trick to amuse and amaze his younger self. After a day's worth of sweat and grime a person could confidently set their thumb on fire for no longer than a second or two, the flames feeding off the fatty oils coating a person's skin. Alys had said that it was a little like lighting a lamp wick.

So he did this now and drew in a sharp breath to blow his hand out a moment later. It didn't really matter, nothing ignited in the end. Chaz touched the eclipse flame and it wasn't hot either, it was just like wafting his hand through a smoky illusion. Magic indeed.

"You can't just blame magic for everything that you don't understand, Chaz," Kyra scolded with a cheeky smile and her hands on her hips, "or else the world is going to get much more magical for you as time goes on. Magic follows laws and principles just like physics do, only it sort of zigzags instead of moving in a straight and narrow line."

"Also the eclipse torch doesn't have an orange flame." Rune announced above all others. He remembered, behind that neurotic bishop it had been sitting there in its bowl upon the pedestal, pulsing an amazing sky blue. He took a step back. "Chaz, I want you to put that fire down on the ground slowly and move away, but be quick about it."

That� what Rune had just said made no sense. It contradicted itself, but Chaz was more concerned with wondering why Rune was speaking to him as if he were holding a ticking bomb. Was it really a bomb? Chaz jerked his hands away as if they had been in contact with poison and the torch dropped to the ground and shattered on the hard stone floor, prompting a little gasp from the boy as the jagged glass spread.

Instead of snuffing out the fire roared. Wren shoved forward and pushed the two girls safely out of the way, while Chaz backed off and placed distance between himself and his friends. "Oh no, this torch is a fake!" He groaned as the flames sprung up and darted about him like a willow-the-wisp, flicking its long tail about behind it. Light trailed it wherever it moved but after a brief flight around the room it smacked into the broken remains of the torch and vanished, seeping into the stone.

Kyra pushed her way back to the forefront of the spectacle and already had her slicer in her hands. "I can sense the presence of a lost and tortured soul. Be careful, it think it's still in h-"

She didn't have enough time to finish her thought. The angry spirit burst through the floor again but this time it had palman form, a being made of pure pale fire hissing and clawing its way out of the ground. Burly and hunched but without a visible head, its most prominent feature was its wickedly hooked claws. It hurt Chaz's eyes to look at it properly because it twisted and flickered, becoming unfocused at every second moment. He drew his sword.

When it saw the flash of high-grade laconia in the shape of a blade the ghostly fire spirit leaned back and uttered a hideous wail, a cry like a beastly monster on the outside but bearing a slight twinge of sentience within, of palmanity that had once been long ago. The blade attracted it, it knew hostility when it saw it. It threw itself toward Chaz in an extremely fluid motion, raising its burning, sputtering arms to strike.

Chaz reacted quickly to the danger and sliced the monster in two. It was a clean cut and swept its way through the beast effortlessly, but it had the same kind of effect as trying to put out a campfire with a pocket knife; it simply didn't make any difference. It came for him so the boy dropped into a crouch and shot ahead under the legs of the monster, only it did not have any real legs to speak of so Chaz passed straight through into the flames.

It was like passing through smoke that only barely, just barely, had mass. His skin crawled and it felt horrible, almost cold without temperature; cold in a much more fundamental sense of the word. The haunting spirit did not turn around, it merely altered its wispy shape so that it was facing the other way. Its back became its front, the joints in its elbows snapped into the opposite direction and its fingers curled backwards, closing into fists.

Rising, Chaz backed away towards his friends as the spirit grew even further in size and blew towards them, hissing like steam escaping into the air. "Move." Wren said flatly and shoved Chaz out of the way, standing in front of his friends and shielding them as well as he could from the monster. He raised his plasma cannon and fired a concentrated burst directly at the spirit, fighting fire with even more fire.

It ate the energy. It was like being fed pure, delicious manna from heaven above. When the burst of superheated plasma smashed into the chest of the spirit with all the force of a sledgehammer it should have snuffed the monster out immediately, that was the only real logical outcome, but things usually turned out differently when dealing with the dead. It absorbed the attack and then seemed to laugh, a deep primal chortle that sounded like gravel or bubbling tar.

"What?!" Wren said, rather surprised, all the flatness in his tone now gone. He had not predicted this kind of outcome at all. There was no time to consider what had gone wrong because a fraction of a second later the creature flicked an arm out like an extended fiery whip, striking Wren hard enough to knock the android over. With him his balance was everything. He was big and he was heavy, once he lost that balance there was nothing stopping him from crashing to the ground.

So Wren went crashing to the ground. Rune and Kyra wisely got out of the way and flanked their enemy on either side, Rune to the left and Kyra to the right. Rika knelt down beside Wren to make sure that her friend was okay, and Chaz was grumpily getting up from where Wren had shoved him over. The two espers knew what they needed to do, they smiled at one another knowingly over the flickering flames. Weapons had no effect, of course something that was material could not affect the immaterial. They each raised a spellcasting hand.

"Hewn!"

"Giwat!"

Kyra's skill struck first, ripping into the haunting spirit and shredding it into an indiscriminate form, a mish-mash of particles and ghostly fire. The monster screamed in pain yet reformed itself in time, only to be struck and struck hard with Rune's giwat technique. Normally this combination of magic would unleash a violent snowstorm that would engulf the entire area, but the two had lagged in synchronization purposefully to prevent that from happening.

The atmosphere was too hot, too heavy, and the lava never would have allowed it. Moreover the melting snow would have made the ground ridiculously slippery. Rune performed his trademark battle-trick and snap froze the spirit in its traumatized state, encasing it in a solid prison of brittle ice. Even like that it wouldn't last very long, not in this kind of heat.

"Hah, he's going to have to do better than that." Rune smirked arrogantly and gripped his staff tightly, pulling his arm back and bringing the ball of his stave down into the monster's lack of a head. Rune wasn't physically strong but the impact was hard enough to shatter the ice. Like the fragments of the broken torch the spirit fell apart and melted away, completely and totally gone.

When Wren sat up from the strike there were trails of smoke and hideous claw marks welded into his front. Thankfully his armor had saved him from serious mechanical injury. He looked to Rika momentarily, who was kneeling by his side and climbed to his feet without aid. Rune was now the center of attention. In the end this conflict could all be traced back to him.

He felt everybody looking at him and smiled reassuringly at Kyra. The esper stepped up to the open chest and started to laugh, finding something terribly amusing. "Lassic!" He shouted as loudly as he could, his voice echoing in the huge, cavernous room. Sweat stood out from his brow. "I know you're out there! Answer me! What are you, a coward?! Why don't you come and fight me instead of relying on your slaves! This is getting old!"

For several moments all they got was the echoing remnants of Rune's booming voice splicing itself into fragments each time it bounced off the stone. The magician was tense, waiting, perhaps even his arms were trembling. Chaz had rarely seen Rune so nervous. If that nervousness could be justified, well, then they were all in for a very long night.

Wren's comparatively quiet voice was a soft counterpoint to Rune's shouting. He held his weapon with both hands and made a slight adjustment to the cannon's settings. "Danger. Enemy is approaching. Please be on your guard." He got into a battle-ready stance.

"I feel it too." Kyra confirmed, sounding worried. Rika looked around in an attempt to anticipate where the enemy would be coming from. Eventually, seconds later as a response to Rune's words they heard laughter, coming from everywhere. Wren could not accurately pinpoint a direction for the sound, it was as if it were emanating from the very walls and floor. The voice sounded dry, aged so much that it seemed practically ancient, but as bitter and as deadly as cyanide.

Instinctively the party of five clustered against one another, shoulder to shoulder and shrinking against that sound. Chaz in particular was holding onto Rika carefully, in all honesty mostly for his own anxiety than hers. Fortunately she did not try to push him away. Her sharp numan eyes were effective for looking through the low light. "There," she informed the others with a slight nod of her head, "look at the lava."

Right behind them it was bubbling and beginning to ripple, hot cracks appearing in the patchy black upper crust. It sort of looked like somebody had been tossing pebbles into it only moments earlier. Something poked out of the fiery waters, dried yet damp and glistening like wet leather. A hand. A mummified hand. Chaz suddenly felt a little faint.

The laughter kicked up a notch as the hand slid forward in the thick superheated soup and found purchase on the edge of the stone floor, digging rotted fingers into the hard surface and using the leverage to push. A figure emerged from the molten canal, decked in a combination of armor and robes yet portraying a thin, skeletal appearance. It was taller than a normal palman, large like a giant scarecrow, and if it had ever been palman in the past it certainly wasn't so now.

Heavy rivulets and globs of bright orange lava fell from its robes and plates of armor as it climbed onto the platform in the center of the chamber, hissing and steaming as they plopped to the ground. Wren detected that Rune had ceased to breathe ever since the enemy had shown its face. His heart rate had increased significantly as well. Understandable, this being was at least twice Wren's own height, but then again this had never stopped any of them before.

"You've finally come� Lutz!" The figure chortled gleefully, rising like a spire up to its full height. It passed a withered palm over its front and wiped a handful of cooling molten stone away. Eyes like bloody, open sores glared at the team from under its heavy metal helmet. It was like being watched by an animated corpse, eyes frozen open by the stiffness of death.

Rune finally started to breathe again, he let out all the stale air with a heavy snort. The grip on his staff tightened considerably, underneath his black velvet gloves his knuckles turned faintly white. "So it was Lassic after all." He said quietly, as if he had been hoping somehow, maybe, that he could have been wrong. Those hopes were now dashed. He recognised that corpse.

The hinge of Lassic's jaw snapped open and closed jerkily as he continued to laugh, his entire voice caked in rust. So the Lutz and his comrades had slain his servants and navigated around all his traps, so what? He was glad of it. In the end it had all brought them down personally to the doorstep of his crypt. "I've waited�" He gasped between his chuckling lack of breath. "I've waited for this moment!"

And the Lutz was now the voice of their team. The others were merely there for his personal support, to rally him. Rune had been there for Zio and Dark Force, it was now time to repay him for that support. If Alis and Odin and Myau were here to see this blast from the past what would they say? How would they feel? Rune, with the ghost and memory of Noah inside of him felt� he didn't know. Maybe that was for the best. "Lassic, why are you reincarnated� like that?" He asked with a slight gesture and grimace to his emaciated foe.

The ancient magician took three weak, shuffling steps towards his enemies. A rancid smell of rotting flesh filled the air and did battle with the volcanic stench of sulfur long before any physical fighting began. Rune's company backed away slightly but Rune stood stock still. "For revenge!" Lassic shouted loudly, almost like a maddened scream. When he spoke again he was back to papery gasping. "Lutz, you� and all who are helping you� will suffer endless pain! I'll kill you all!"

He moved forward again into the better light and unexpectedly grasped at the sleeve of his robe and pushed it back roughly, revealing to the living people in the room the putrid spectacle of his bare lower arm. It was little more than bone and moist raggedy leather covering piano-string muscles and tendons, partially eaten away by worms, maggots and other horrible flesh eaters. Lassic grinned, though his grin was permanent for his lips had long since rotted away. "I will make you like me, like this! You too will become tortured souls who can never leave my castle!"

For a moment Chaz tasted vomit on the back of his tongue. Just looking at that decomposing flesh was terrible, but if they lost this battle that would be their fate. Not death but a fate worse than death, actual undeath; a hell in life. They had to win, Chaz didn't want to become a zombie. They very thought of him falling apart like that made him feel sick. The hunter swallowed hard. "So that's why you lured us here?" He squeaked.

Lassic shook out his sleeve again much to the relief of his living enemies and bowed to them formally, regally. His back made a brittle cracking sound as he bent over. "Oh joy! You have responded to my invitation!" He giggled, throwing out a hand as if to grasp something invisible. There was a sudden flash of light which burned a nasty after-image onto Chaz's retinas. After a few blinks and when his vision cleared he saw that Lassic was standing up straight again and holding an evil-looking bladed rod in his hands.

He seemed frail but it was still going to be an intensely complicated fight. He swung his rod experimentally, the blades causing pretty streaks within the dark. Satisfied with this, he began to crow. "I have waited two thousand years to cut your throats!"

And then he was upon them with a speed which was surprising for a decomposing old man. Chaz barely had the time to shout; "Here he comes!" before Rune had to parry a rod strike with his own stave and put both his arms into the block to prevent the strike from hitting home. He resisted for a few seconds and then escaped to the side, the blades swooping down onto empty air.

Rika moved like greased lightning and was on the front lines in an instant, leaping forward and scrambling up Lassic�s halberd like a tightrope walker and going straight for the prize. She got an arm up and sunk her claw into the exposed nook between the shoulder plate and chest armor, trying to shred out the junction. She couldn�t complete the sweep and dig a trench through his body like she usually would, the armor getting in the way. Still, she hoped it hurt.

Lassic seized her and pulled her out of the wound like a troublesome bee, grabbing her around the middle and hurling her away. No blood poured from the opening, he was far too old for that, but Lassic had only a second to decide what came next when something incredibly sharp and bladed sheared into his back, slicing through the metal and biting the flesh. He reached behind himself and yanked out Kyra�s slicer, tossing it away as if it were a discarded toy.

It fell close to Wren�s ankle as the android dropped to one knee to find the perfect shot, locking-on with the targeting program built into his optical sensors. He fired a blast from his plasma gun but Lassic spread out his ragged yet heavy cape around him like a shield and the cloth ate up the firepower, though Wren was completely unable to explain or rationalize how. The cape swept back and Lassic had pulled his halberd from the ground again, this time pointing it directly at Wren.

Chaz�s githu technique punched a hole through the magician�s breastplate and went right out the other end but Lassic hardly flinched, he barely even noticed it. All he did was glare at the puny hunter for a second and grin; he�d get back to the boy in a moment. Wren knew he was being targeted and raised his barrier shield in the hopes that it would dampen the attack, but he did not back away. If Lassic got just a little bit closer he could retaliate with his flare weapon.

Certain elements when exposed to Wren�s body usually had little to no effect. Fire, ice, gravity, these could only hurt him if he were exposed to these elements for a very long period of time. As such, some magic usually did not concern him, but there were two types of conjuration that really, really hurt. Corrosive acid could eat away and destroy his armor and most precious parts, but even more than that thunder and surplus electricity could dangerously mess him up inside.

It was thunder that leapt from Lassic�s bladed staff in blue jagged arcs, nervous explosive energy, seeking out the most conductive target in the shortest amount of time and space. Wren was a lightning magnet, it jumped straight towards him with raw eager fury. There was no way for him to evade the attack; the barrier shield did no good. He could not escape and it was the very first time Chaz had ever heard Wren scream, out of nothing but pure pain.

If it had been himself or Rune they probably would have still been standing when the spell ended. The scream became stuck in Chaz�s mind even as the android fell to the ground in a lifeless heap, the gun dropping from his hands and clattering to the side. Were this a non-combat scenario he would have gone over to check on him instantly, but slaying Lassic was their top priority right now. He�d be fine; he could take care of himself. Chaz forced himself to forget about Wren and ran to Lassic�s side, trying to both flank him and do it relatively unnoticed at the same time.

Rune made a gesture with his hand and shouted "Nafoi!" as powerfully as he could, drawing their enemy�s attention away from Wren and the suddenly elusive Chaz. The esper was his main target and where possible Lassic was going to focus on him. A column of fire showered down upon him and caught in places, melting and burning the dried flesh, peeling back to show more sinew and bone. Lassic groaned, and then he laughed. "Destroying what is already dead has no purpose!" He mocked.

He directed a second thunder strike to Rune and lightning once more leapt from his stave, but instead of bolting through Rune�s body in an attempt to get to the floor as fast as possible it saw a more conductive target and claimed that as its own. Rune braced himself anyway for the eventual agony.

Kyra had not thrown her slicer as any kind of attack. It had no target, no destination; all it needed to do was remain in the air. Kyra�s slicers were also made of laconia, a conductive metal, and she had never skimped on her physics lessons. Physics followed the straight and narrow, and more often than not it could be more useful than magic sometimes.

The slicer passed between Rune and Lassic�s stave and the lightning was attracted to it instantly, embracing the metal and blowing it apart while melting the rest. Rune�s only real danger now was from shrapnel. Kyra searched her belt under her cape and pulled out a second slicer, (she always carried a spare) and darted out of the way to arrange her next attack.

Rune saw Kyra dart away and realized that she had really saved his hide. He would have to thank her later. For now though he took his staff and touched the end to the floor, scrawling something invisible and muttering under his breath. When he was done Rune looked up and tapped the floor hard with his weapon, intoning the word "Gigra!" as he did.

It ensnared Lassic in a heavy gravity field and for a few moments the magician could not move, the pressure of many tons bearing down upon him. Chaz was nearly caught in the field himself as he edged around to Lassic�s back, meeting up with Rika coming around the other side. She didn�t seem hurt but she did seem surprised to see Chaz crouching there. "Chaz?" She asked.

"Good, you�re here." The hunter said curtly in a no-nonsense manner. He was completely focused on what he was about to do; now fighting in his zone. The personality change that happened to him during complicated fights had already taken place. Rika felt like she was the only one who had ever actually noticed it, when the boy suddenly became the leader. "Come and give me a leg up. I need to jump and I can�t do it like you can. Hurry!"

He put an arm back and rested the flat of his longsword heavy against his shoulder. He was certainly planning something. Rika dropped down to one knee and held out her hand for Chaz to take. The hunter grasped it and entrusted his balance to her, placing one boot on her shoulder and the other tensed on the ground for kick-off. "Are you ready?" She asked, thankful that Chaz was relatively light.

"Yeah, let me go at the count of three. One� two� three!"

At that Rika uncoiled her legs and stood up as fast as she could with Chaz�s weight on her shoulder, pushing up with her arm as well and letting go of Chaz�s hand at the very height of her push. It was a rather simple acrobatic maneuver but it could still go awry. The boy jumped from his platform upon Rika and raised his sword, biceps bulging as he held his weapon up like a baseball bat.

It was a skill that Chaz had only recently begun to experiment with. He sprang up to the correct height and with a feral cry he brought his sword down in a crescent chopping motion, cutting cleanly through the dark magician�s neck. He didn�t even have to use half the amount of strength that he did; it wasn�t any tougher than chopping through sponge. Lassic�s head was suddenly divorced from his body, tumbling down and rolling away a short distance from his home.

Chaz himself landed gracefully on his feet, then he and Rika moved away as the headless body wobbled on its legs, freed from Rune�s gravity spell, and fell boneless onto its back. Its blue-red cloak billowed around him almost in slow motion as it made the heavy, armor-rattling thump. Not a single drop of blood leaked from the severed neck veins, its cold black heart completely dry.

Then there was silence. Chaz and Rika jumped over Lassic's still body to get to Rune and Kyra, standing there and staring at their leader's clean handiwork. Chaz was breathing a little heavily from the excitement and the adrenaline getting ready to be flushed from his bloodstream. "Are you two alright?" He asked, sheathing his sword.

"Yes, we're fine." Kyra assured them. "What about you?"

"We're not hurt." Chaz replied, then they all went over to the member of their team who had not been so lucky. They moved over and examined him to see if he was okay. Chaz got there first and knelt down by his side, Rika joining him seconds later with Rune and Kyra standing behind them. Wren was lying there completely unconscious, it just looked like he was taking a nap. Chaz lightly placed a hand on his brow but couldn't really check his temperature, as there was no point. "Hey, Wren. Are you okay? Can you hear me?" He asked gently.

"It was a pretty powerful bolt that hit him." Rune commented, still slightly on his guard. He wasn't an expert at this, but he thought that if Wren wasn't dead then he'd probably wake up on his own. If not Rika could have a go at fixing him with his spare repair kit. If nothing changed then, well� then that would just be a shame.

"But not powerful enough to kill him, right Rika?" Chaz asked his friend in a remarkably even tone. It had only been one spell. Wren couldn't be killed by one singular spell.

Rika shrugged. She didn't know. At that very moment Wren opened his eyes, immediately awake. He could feel a gentle pressure on his forehead and looked to the left where Chaz and Rika were kneeling. He blinked once, slowly. It seemed like the battle was now over and they were still all there, still alive. "Hello Chaz. That experience was quite painful. I am sorry that I was not able to be of great use to you." He apologized.

But just hearing him speaking now was enough. Wren sat up carefully and performed a quick diagnostic to make sure he had no serious internal injuries. His emergency shutdown system had activated the moment the bolts had ripped through his body, floodgating the surplus electricity before it could reach somewhere vital. Nevertheless he still felt very frayed and unstable on the outside.

He reached up and rubbed his head lightly but found his arm pinned there when Chaz leaned forward and wrapped his arms around the android, giving him a hugely relieved hug. It was a pretty public display of affection; the others were right there next to him. Wren let Chaz hug him for about five seconds and then attempted to push the boy away. "Chaz, please. Let go of me." He requested quietly with a small smile.

Chaz didn't want to do that but he knew it was for the best. He released his friend and stood with the others, while Wren took an extra second to get up and retrieve the gun he had temporarily lost when he broke. "What have I missed?" He inquired as he checked the weapon over for damages.

"Chaz lopped his head off. I think all we have to do now is find the real eclipse torch and head back to Dezoris." Rika explained as she took Chaz's hand. It seemed strange that such a deadly enemy could be killed so easily, but then again nobody was trying to murder them anymore so that was good. The young hunter seemed rather proud of his achievements.

"This doesn't seem right�" Rune frowned as he leaned against his staff. The last time he had fought against Lassic had been at least ten times harder than this. He had expected more. He had almost been hoping for more. After two thousand years of waiting he should have packed more tricks up his sleeve. The esper looked to the corpse and wondered. Perhaps he still did.

And when Lassic started to laugh again somehow it actually made Rune feel better. The laughter was more localized this time and harsher, a hacking cough tinged with slight pain. Kyra was the bravest or possibly the most curious and she tiptoed over to the body, but remained a comfortable distance away.

The severed head was laughing at them. Lassic's jaw kept tapping the ground and threatened to fall away from the rest of his skull but that did not seem to be of his concern. "You fools�" He gasped helplessly as he glared up at Chaz and his team. "You pitiful, damned fools. You cannot kill what is already dead. You cannot hurt what is already dead. You cannot stop what is already dead!"

His laughter became a series of long, deep, screaming howls. As this occurred a white fluid began to leak from his cut jugular and other neck veins, something thick and clumpy that looked like off-white rice. It was only when a long, shiny multi-legged centipede crawled out from the cavity in his throat that Kyra realised what the white stuff was. Maggots, still alive and messily squirming, they started to pour from Lassic's giggly mouth like grainy vomit. Kyra shrieked and stepped away, backing up against Rune's front.

Chaz and Rune had gone considerably paler and Rika turned her head to look away. Only Wren seemed relatively unaffected by this grotesque display of necrosis. He walked over to the fallen magician and briefly wondered what the results of this scenario would be like if he drew a leg back and kicked the severed head all the way across the room. He did not follow up this line of inquiry, instead he pointed the end of his cannon directly into his enemy's face. "However, it is possible to destroy that which has no life. I do not fear the fate you have planned for us."

Lassic smiled up at the android and with a long blackened tongue he spat out the body of a fat hairy spider. It promptly scurried away. "You do not fear eternal torment, of course not, the things that golems fear are few and far between. But I do know of your fears, young one, I have seen to them just as I have seen to everybody else's�"

Wren did not change expression but the admission intrigued him. "This is irrelevant. Let us see how sharply you can think without a head nearby." There was a tiny, barely audible click as Wren applied pressure to the trigger, only the slightest feather-touch more would set off his large weapon.

The body moved independently of Lassic's head, which continued to grin at Wren and the rest of his team. The arms moved, fingers stretching and flexing as if to coax feeling back inside, then the body sat up of its own accord. The gaping, drooping neck reminded Chaz of a plucked headless chicken, or, and a cold chill ran down his spine as he thought this, it also reminded him of a wide open mouth permanently locked in a scream. More maggots beaded at the cut, worming their way out of the woodwork to see what was going on.

Wren did not shoot. Like the others he was suddenly more concerned with the actions of Lassic's body rather than his head. "I am perennial; unkillable." The ancient tyrant boomed as he stood up proudly, with barely a wobble to his balance. "In my castle I am omniscient, and all who walk between these walls are subject and indebted to my will. My power is not of this dimension or world."

"Narcissistic much?" Rune quipped, calm as Lassic bent over to retrieve his lost head. Clumps of unmentionable things dripped from Lassic's throat as he picked it up from the ground. Raising his arms the magician pressed the two wounds together, the flesh, skin, veins and spinal column recombining with a wet meaty sound.

"Allow me to show you the extent of my influence," He taunted, making a gesture with his hand and summoning his halberd back to his side. He looked down at Wren who was ready to blast a hole in him at the slightest provocation, but he was listening as well. Lassic raised his weapon up high. "And you, golem, allow me to give you the opportunity to fear!"

From the tip of his halberd's blade there came a blinding flash of pale blue light, for a second completely blinding everybody until all they could see was blue. Lassic disappeared, the surrounding area disappeared, and all that remained were a pair of huge red eyes glaring, unblinkingly staring.

For a moment it felt like something had tried to grab Wren, with arms strong and somehow more powerful than his own, but it had slipped and couldn't quite get a good hold of his body; of his mind. It let go. The android speculated that his brain waves were incompatible with whatever Lassic was trying to do to him. He blinked and the eyes were gone along with the bright blue flash.

He had no damages and that was fortunate. Wren glanced to his friends standing nearby but only Rika met his gaze, the girl blinking and trying to get the white after-images out of her vision. Beside her Chaz was standing perfectly still and quiet, his eyes all glazed over. The boy's hand dropped from Rika's lifelessly. It was like he had fallen asleep with his eyes open while standing up, or like he had become a living zombie.

Rika looked back at Wren with confusion and then noticed Chaz. She waved her hand across his face briefly to get a reaction but the hunter didn't flinch, he did not even blink. Rune and Kyra were also standing there with equally glazed expressions on their faces. "Chaz?" She asked, worried. "Chaz, are you okay?"

Before them Lassic lowered his staff and was pleased with the results of his spell. Three out of five was not bad for a successful possession and he had not expected the golem to be affected anyway. He wanted him to watch. Even better than that he had the Lutz's strings in his hands now and he was ready to make him dance.

"Why are you not affected, Rika?" Wren asked calmly although he was worried as well.

"I don't know, it just didn't want to grab me. It went straight through me instead." She confessed, and was it just Wren's optics playing up on him from the flash, but did the white flower in Rika's hair seem brighter than usual? She grabbed Chaz and gave him a light shake. He did not respond. "Come on, Chaz! Wake up!"

"You there, boy," Lassic ordered with obvious glee, "kill the pretty woman beside you. Gut her with your blade." He turned to the two espers standing there and waiting for orders. "You, woman, take apart the golem with your weapon and your magic. Lastly, Lutz, I have a special fate just for you. Go and kill yourself. Have a lava bath, but do take your time. I command you all, go!"

Wren and Rika shared an unspoken query within a glance. That made no sense, why would Chaz and the others obey-

Chaz, Kyra and Rune suddenly animated themselves as if they were marionettes being pulled by invisible strings. The doll-like, strangely unbalanced way that they moved made them seem less like people and more like fleshy objects. Rika's reflexes kicked in and she intercepted Chaz's wrist before he could stick one of his daggers into her chest. His hand had been steady and unimaginably strong, stronger than before.

He looked at her blankly as Rika shoved him away, but he didn't waste a second and came at her again with two knives this time, slashing and stabbing with almost mechanical dedication and indifference. Rika could barely evade and block the heated attacks, each motion increasing the height of her panic. "Chaz!" She shouted as the knife blade narrowly missed cutting out a piece of her ear. "What the hell is wrong with you?!" He did not hear her. If anything it made his next assault even stronger.

Wren turned sharply on his heel and moved to save Rika from Chaz and possibly stop them from hurting one another, but he only managed to take three or four steps before he was hit with an immobilizing, forceful pain. He was shoved to the ground, his weapon knocked from his hands and striking the floor as if it had been attracted by a magnet. The cables which connected his gun to his arm tore, he had no choice but to cut off the electricity immediately or risk setting off sparks.

Lowering her hand after she had cast the gravity spell Kyra walked over to her target flattened against the ground. Wren pushed himself up on his hands and knees underneath the great pressure, but winced in pain and uttered a soft gasp as Kyra buried one prong of her bladed slicer deep into his back. The quality of his armor was weaker than that of her weapon, so with enough force the girl penetrated his defenses and stabbed him deep down into his inner circuitry.

Rune did not attack anybody. His only target was himself. His hand went limp and his staff clattered to the floor, rolling a few feet away. The esper's usually icy blue eyes were now pale and vacant, seeing but no longer comprehending. Slowly and deliberately he began to walk to the edge of the chamber, to the bubbling lava that Lassic had emerged from. If he disappeared into those depths not only would it kill him and burn him alive, he would become part of Lassic's undead ranks for the rest of eternity.

And the only two people capable of helping him were preoccupied with their own problems. Wren clanked back onto the floor when Kyra stabbed him and he heard and felt a horrible rough grating noise when Kyra wrenched the weapon out of his back again. He needed to move, had to get out of the way before she punched open enough holes to turn him into a sieve, but the gravity was too effective in pinning him there. Wren was just too heavy to escape.

Still, he managed to raise his head and look up to Chaz and Rika engaged in a duel of their own. The numan girl was actively fighting back now but she was trying her hardest not to hurt him, while Chaz wasn't concerned with such trivial matters in the slightest. Wren knew that they both loved one another. If one managed to hurt the other the guilt and remorse would be great for the attacker, but if they did not defend themselves either they could wind up dead.

Wren cared for Rika almost as if she were a daughter to him, and of course he cared for Chaz deeply just as a lover should. He was the useless third wheel which prevented them from admitting their feelings to each other, but he could have some use to them if he saved their lives. He did not want to lie here and be forced to watch his friends die.

Kyra raised the slicer a second time to stab him again but Wren tapped into all the strength he could access at the moment and pushed himself upright again. He escaped the gravitational field and ran to the numan girl and the hunter, just as Chaz sheathed his twin daggers back into his belt in a smooth, professional manner and drew his sword. It gleamed in the low light, almost hungrily as he jabbed it at Rika, and this time he did not miss.

"Chaz, stop!" Wren yelled as Rika leaned back to avoid another dagger strike in-between defensive blocks, but Chaz was no longer wielding a dagger; he was carrying a sword. She did not skid back far enough. The very moment the android shouted the boy executed his attack and buried the blade of his laconia sword halfway to the hilt in Rika's stomach, piercing cleanly through her armor.

The scene froze. Even in the hot, volcanic air a chill seemed to pass through the room. Rika went as white as a sheet, the pain hit her like a meteor strike only two seconds after the sword impaled her flesh. Blood dripped down the length of the blade in a gentle patter, then a much heavier stream. Chaz showed no emotion at all, even when Rika's blood spilled over onto his hand and wrist. She made a weak, pitiful sobbing sound and she lost strength in her legs, but that only pushed her further onto Chaz's cold steel.

Her sob became a cry of deeper pain when Chaz deemed he had held her up long enough and yanked out the sword in one quick motion, withdrawing it just as quickly as it had gone in. There was some sort of murderous beauty to it. With nothing holding her up Rika crumpled down into a little pile, bleeding and mewing in quiet agony. Chaz dropped his bloody sword and it fell beside her. It was done. He had obeyed Lassic's order well.

It was only a matter of time now before Rika would die.
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