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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
- 8
- 9
- 10
(A/N: Well, I apologize for not updating any of my stories
recently. For the past three months I have been on vacation in a
couple of different countries, so my main concern has been with
relaxing and having fun. I kept scribbling little bits and pieces of
this chapter while I had some free time, and so here it is! A
cliffhanger! People are gonna either love or hate this. Salutations
from my American/Canadian adventure!)

Chaz
and his company came to a fresh new dilemma about halfway between the
townships of Zosa and Reshel. The weather had worsened considerably
as the ice digger made good time, pelting it with sleet, snow and
fragments of ice. The closer they got to the Garuberk tower the worse
the storm became. The five travelers knew now that Raja had been more
than just certain about the cause, he had been right. It was now one
or two hours before noon and the visibility outside the digger was
not perfect, but Wren had still been able to see the roadblock before
the vehicle had a chance to directly collide with it. He had to break
pretty sharply, though.

The belt treads locked as Wren put his foot on the brakes and the
machine lurched forward, like a man with vertigo before coming to a
complete halt. In the occupied bunkers Rune was rudely awakened, a
case of concentrated trimate falling off the top of a shelf and
striking him between the shoulder blades as he lay snoozing and prone
in his hammock. He squawked and was immediately jolted awake,
prepared to send whoever it was that had awoken him to a fate worse
than death. In another bunker Rika cried out in frustration as her
surprisingly large house of cards collapsed to the ground. Chaz and
Kyra had been watching her work on it with interest. The gods only
knew how she had managed to build it up so far on a moving vehicle.

The voice of their driver popped up through the ice digger's
loudspeaker system. It wasn't really necessary for him to do that,
the machine was small enough for Wren to shout and they easily could
have heard him, but it seemed like Wren just wasn't the shouting
type. He apologized for their sudden halt and asked for their
presence in the conference room. The four adventurers knew that it
was far too early for them to have reached Meese yet. Whatever the
problem was it was something that Wren didn't want to handle on his
own. That meant it could be very, very bad.

"So... what do you think it is?"

Rika still had the cards that she was shuffling within her hands
and Rune continued to look half asleep. It wasn't as bad as they had
first thought it would be, thank goodness for that. It was actually
kind of funny. Chaz and Kyra were smiling at the look of utter
perplexity written on Wren's face. They were traveling through very
dangerous territory now, formless terrain riddled with snow worm
colonies, and the path dictated by the digger's global positioning
system was the only road they could take safely. Deviating in the
slightest meant they could drive into a whole nest of the creatures.

"I do not know. That is why I called you to the bridge.
Should I blast it out of the way?"

There was an obstacle in the middle of their path. "No, it
looks like a big bird's nest." Kyra observed. It was several
feet across and several feet wide, looking like it had been built
from pine needles and the twigs from other coniferous trees. Wren
wanted it moved out of the way so they could continue to travel
peacefully, but nobody really supported the idea of blowing it to
smithereens. Rika was dead set against the idea - she had a feeling
that it belonged to a family of Dezoris penguins. When Wren leant
across the dashboard to reach the side-mounted laser cannons she
grabbed his arm and restrained him.

Rune looked serious and possibly more awake than earlier. He
wasn't an expert in Dezorian wildlife but he felt he would be able to
tell a Dezo penguin nest from the cradle of some incredibly fearsome
monster. There were many ways to tell that sort of thing, but
unfortunately the roadblock looked blurry and indistinct in the
storm. There was no way he was going outside just for a closer look.
The esper stopped squinting. "It doesn't matter what it is, we
just have to get it out of our way." He said thickly, feeling
his back ache just a tad. That trimate case had sharp corners.

"Without blowing it up?" Chaz added helpfully from where
he was standing. He was in a good mood right now and wanted to
contribute to the conversation in any way he could. He had an idea,
although it probably wouldn't be regarded any better than Wren's
idea. The hunter had the slightest inkling that he should stick up
for his friend, but he liked his own idea better. "Maybe we
should go out there and move it by hand. It's cold outside, but at
least we won't have to run it over or anything."

The numan girl brightened instantly, warming up to Chaz's way of
thinking. "That's a great idea! I'm sure the penguins won't mind
very much if we move their home a couple yards to the left or right.
Especially if it means Wren doesn't have to wipe them out." She
looked at him slyly and the machine seemed a little put off at being
picked on. Beside Rika Chaz grinned at being congratulated, but then
the girl asked the question that nobody was willing to answer. "Who's
going to go outside?"

There was a prominent lack of response. Chaz, Rune and Kyra all
glanced at one another, plumbing each other's expressions to see who
would give in first. All were plotting reasons why one of the others
were so much more suited to the task. Kyra and Rune were natives to
this planet; they could handle the low temperatures better. Chaz was
their leader, he needed to take control of the situation. If Rika
wanted to save those damn penguins so much, then she should move it
herself. The room became full of suggestions on what should be done.
The espers considered themselves too important for grunt work and the
visitors from Motavia didn't think they could last for very long in
the storm. They were only a couple of hairs away from a fully-fledged
argument.

Meanwhile they were getting nowhere. Rika suddenly had an idea for
a compromise. Nobody would like it but at least it might stop the
quarreling. “Well, what if we all all go outside at
once? We can leave the digger idling so we won't have to start it up
a second time. It shouldn't take long to move one little nest out of
the way.” They all knew that Rika probably had the best idea.
The problem was who was going to stay in the warm ice digger, not who
was going to go out there in the frigid cold. They could all endure
it.

“That is not necessary, Rika,” Wren announced from
where he was sitting, “I shall go and remove the obstacle while
the rest of you remain here. The temperature and weather does not
bother me and it is not safe to send our entire party into a
dangerous environment.”

“Don't be silly, it's even more dangerous to send a single
person into a storm alone, whether they be palman, esper or
machine.” Rika pressed obstinately. Arguing with her was like
trying to nail a zol slug to the wall; you succeed only momentarily
before the problem divides and multiplies. “If you're going to
go out there by yourself, then I'm coming with you.” She
finished, then ran back to her small bunker to grab her furry winter
coat. At least she was realistic enough to dress up warmly. Wren had
not responded to her, because denying her what she wanted only made
her conviction stronger.

Chaz suffered a change of heart. He
could not allow Rika or Wren to go off into the cold storm without
him. He wanted to be close to Rika, to protect her, even more so
since his failure to rescue her in the Air Castle. He felt he had to
redeem himself in that respect. Wren was a good guardian but Chaz
wanted to watch over her himself. Speaking of Wren, Chaz also wished
to follow him as well, to see just what kind of shape their
relationship had formed. It was only a little task, anyway. “I'll
come too, just in case.” He said, smiling.

But the chain of volunteers was broken
at that point. The two espers didn't really see any reason to get
their hands dirty. Those three would be enough to do the job, and now
they didn't have to leave the safety of the digger. Rune smirked in
his usual cool manner as Rika returned, pulling her arms and her
retracted battle claws through the sleeves of her coat. “Sounds
like you have all the help you'll need. Kyra and I will guard the
digger. Don't take too long or we'll never get to Meese on time.”

That was just like Rune, to duck out of
work because it was beneath his station. Chaz rolled his eyes at him
briefly and then opened the near-invisible doorway etched into the
digger's grey hull. There was a small pressurized airlock in case the
ice digger was being used upon an uninhabitable planet. The second
door opened and then came a blast of incredibly cold air, a
smattering of icy flakes scattering upon the floor. The exit was a
cleanly cut rectangle of blinding white, the path to the storm. Chaz
wasn't even outside yet and he was beginning to shiver. Well, better
get it over and done with.

The three adventurers descended down
the ramp into Dezoris' snowstorm. There was an audible hydraulic hiss
behind them as soon as they all stood within the snowdrifts. Rune and
Kyra had wasted no time in retracting the ramp and closing the door
again. They didn't want the draft to take their artificial heat away.
Rika was standing beside Chaz, her arms folded very tightly across
her front. The hunter wondered if she was having second thoughts yet.
The wind was tugging and pulling at her coat roughly, exposing her
body underneath. Her battle gear may have helped to increase her
mobility in combat, but it was not good winter clothing. Poor Rika.

Chaz's full bodysuit managed to
insulate him slightly, but it was desert gear, not for the arctic. He
was no better off. Being outside in the whipping snowflakes was like
being stung by minute needles. Chaz squinted a little to keep the
wind from stinging his eyes. No wonder Dezorians were so naturally
slit-eyed! Wren started to move forward and the other two gratefully
followed him. Chaz and Rika walked closely behind him, using the
large android as a windbreaker and as a shield. The jagged wind
subsided, but the cold still remained. The obstacle in their path
wasn't far.

They were keeping as close as they
could to the side of the ice digger, keeping it as a reference. It
was funny, the vehicle seemed an awful lot bigger on the outside when
compared to the inside. It was maybe just a matter of perspective,
but those belt treads stood even taller than Chaz's head. Rune would
have said that that was an easy feat to accomplish, but, yes, it was
the blank backdrop of the snowstorm that made the digger seem bigger,
because of the lack of comparison. Chaz hoped they wouldn't catch
snow blindness from it. “This storm is so thick I can't see a
thing!” Rika shouted, almost voicing Chaz's exact thoughts.

“Stay close to me and you will not get lost.” Wren
replied from the front of the line. The other two knew that it was
sound advice. They passed the protruding frontal drills that were
attached to the ice digger, built from a hefty material able to crush
blocks of ice and slow-moving glaciers to powder. The drills were
built for that purpose only, but Chaz could imagine the incredible
destructive power it could hold when turned against the bodies of
other living beings.

The feeling of cold was beginning to
fade away. He reckoned that his body was beginning to acclimatise and
adjust, and none too early. Chaz couldn't see where they were headed
because of the windbreak, but the faint jumbled outline of the bird's
nest appeared several yards away, dark yet encrusted with snow. It
looked even more bizarre outside of the ice digger but fortunately it
wouldn't be as heavy. Chaz fought the winds to one side of the nest
and tried to get a good grip on the edge, many little twigs and
things scratching at his unprotected fingers. He broke off a few that
were irritating him and made a pair of hand-holds in its side. Wren
and Rika were doing the same thing on their part of the obstruction.

They lifted, and it was heavier than it
first seemed to be, heavier than mere twigs, but Chaz had put on a
bit of muscle in the previous few months and the extra weight did not
bother him much. The three of them heaved the nest out of the path of
the ice digger, leaving deep footprints in the snow. At one point
Chaz's boot crunched through a hidden crust of ice beneath the
snowdrifts, causing him to sink almost a foot beneath the surface
layer. He managed to yank his leg out again with a little strain and
a curse.

“Hey, can you guys feel that?” Rika shouted nervously
as she scuffled backwards with part of the nest in her arms. She
looked to Chaz. Something didn't feel quite right and she wanted to
know if the others felt the same. The sense that warned her of danger
was tickling her awareness, somewhere in the primitive part of her
mind. Odd white shapes were clumped together in the bowl of the nest,
weighing it down. Were they dezo penguin eggs maybe?

Wren had to leave the intuition part to
his two friends. Everything that he felt was always based on cold
hard data. Well, almost everything, that was. He watched Chaz
and Rika exchange a glance between themselves but they both looked
slightly confused. Whatever it was that they were sensing they did
not understand it either. Wren set down his part of the obstruction
on the ground and then rose to his full height. “It may be the
vibrations of the snow worms that you detect. This area is riddled
with their presence.”

No, it wasn't that. In truth, it felt
like Chaz also was expecting something bad to happen. He wondered why
he was suddenly thinking so pessimistically. In any case their job
was done. The nest was moved a safe distance to the side and the ice
digger could pass through freely. As if to accentuate this either
Rune or Kyra flashed the ice digger's lights three times, telling
them that they could get out of that crazy storm now. Chaz stumbled
over and took Rika by the arm. “C'mon, let's go.” He
said.

“Wait.” Rika answered clearly between two gusts of
rending wind. It didn't matter that Chaz was probably about to catch
frostbite or that Wren was already walking back to the big machine
with one arm held up to keep the snow from blinding his eyes,
something had snagged her attention and it didn't want to let go. She
knelt beside the large nest and leaned over it, sticking her arms
inside. Rika knew it was wrong to disturb a creature's home, but they
had done that already, so what more harm could she do? Besides, one
of those eggs looked strangely out of shape. She hoped they hadn't
broken it somehow.

Chaz watched her lift a white oval
shape out of the nest with the greatest of care. An idea came and he
shook his head negatively. There was no room in their party for giant
penguin hatchlings. “Rika, no. Put it back. That's not yours.”
The numan girl looked at him reproachfully for a few seconds and Chaz
softened a little, as much as the low temperatures would allow. “It
would be happier if it stayed here in its natural habitat.”

She hadn't been thinking of keeping it
at all, Rika had only been concerned that the egg had been damaged
somehow. It was nearly completely caked with snow, and as she turned
it about in her delicate yet strong hands parts of the icy covering
began to fall from it, piece by piece. The numan's eyes widened
almost comically, yet there was nothing comical within them. Rika's
mouth opened up in a small silent gape of horror.

With the snowy covering removed several
seams, cracks and hollows became apparent to the two adventurers
still standing and kneeling beside the nest. Twin dark holes were
poked in the front with the left eye socket broken and fractured,
while below that the triangular depression of the nose was still
tightly packed with snow. The brain case was bone white and pristine,
save for a violent and precise puncture in the back. There was a
quiet little thump as the hingeless jawbone broke free of the snow
and tumbled into the nest with a soft rustling sound. Even without
its jaw it still seemed to grin triumphantly at them; at Rika in
particular.

It was a skull. A palman's skull.

Rika didn't scream, but she made sort
of a surprised squeaking sound and dropped the skull straight back
into the nest, jerking back reflexively. It landed face-up and
continued to smile chinlessly at her, as if it found the expression
on her face amusing. Chaz felt weak in the knees and experienced a
sick sinking sensation as he recognized what the other white lumps
were. Bones. More skulls. Some creature's trophy collection. The
hunter pulled Rika to her feet and proceeded to drag her away from
the nest, his face ashen grey. If they hung around here that creature
might come back, but maybe they could escape in time.

Cries from the west robbed Chaz of his
hope. It sounded like a flock of harpies, screeching from far away.
They reacted to that sound within moments, Chaz drawing his sword
while Rika extended her claws. “Darn it.” The blond youth
cursed as he turned to face the noise, placing his back against the
gently rising slope. The cries were coming overhead from the
direction of the ice digger, which meant if they were pressed back it
would be away from their only means of safety. How could they have
been so stupid?

“Sorry.” Rika apologized beside her friend, her hands
still trembling just the slightest bit from when she had held the
skull. She knew that she had led Chaz straight into a palman's
graveyard. Small dark shapes rippled into view amidst the snowstorm,
four of them, but Rika still did not regret her decision to try and
save some helpless creatures, even if they had turned out to be
monsters. She willed her hands to be motionless, and her body and
mind to calm. They did so flawlessly and her confidence came back, as
strong as it ever was.

“It's okay, you didn't know. Wren!” Chaz answered her
forgivingly and then called out to their friend who was currently too
far away to be of use. He didn't know if he could shout loud enough
in this blustering storm, but Wren seemed to pause and look at him
questioningly, detecting the sound of Chaz's voice but not his words.
His hair was almost completely white with snow. Rika waved at him
hurriedly and Chaz attempted to shout even louder. “Battle! Get
over here right now!”

He was able to make out the word
'battle' and that motivated him immensely, the android ceasing the
slow walk towards his friends and breaking out into the best sprint
that he could manage whilst in the loosely-packed snow. Wren
calculated that he did not have enough time to head back to the ice
digger and retrieve his plasma rifle, but he was certain that his
level of battle effectiveness would not be hampered by his lack of a
weapon. He was a weapon, after all. Wren could only hope that
he'd be able to make it in time, and already he was charging his
flare beam, just in case.

When the conflict struck Wren was still
ten seconds away. The dark shapes burst upon the small party and
while Rika was able to completely evade in time, Chaz could only
swing his free arm up to shield his face and hear the gritty clangs
as long hooked talons scraped away at his hand guard. A burst of
super cold air struck him full in the face when the monster beat its
wings directly above him, but Chaz had gotten a good look at his foe
in the one second that he had been given before he closed his eyes
entirely to the wind. It was a dezo owl, the fearless hunter of the
frosty skies.

This was bad. Dezo owls were dangerous
creatures and Chaz's party had only been completely confident in
engaging them while they were inside the ice digger. They had an
advantage in mobility and speed, while their hardened talons and
beaks could crack both metal and bone. Worse still, this was not one
owl but four of them, so they were outnumbered too. Chaz lifted his
sword arm and swiped blindly with his blade, hoping to strike some
flesh or at least beat the bird back a little, but he sensed no
resistance to his sword at all. Likewise the clawing at his guard arm
had ceased.

Rika shouted a battle cry and plucked
one of the birds out of the air, forcing herself to land harshly on
her stomach so that the owl would feel the full impact as her
cushion. It squawked in pain and surprise then nipped at Rika's upper
arm, gouging out a small yet notably deep wound. The snow beneath the
numan girl became slightly spotted with red. Meanwhile Chaz's foe had
angled away from him sharply and then had dive-bombed him from the
side, pushing the youth away from his comrade. Chaz turned towards
the new direction of the attack and stumbled over the birds nest that
was in his path, the thing that the dezo owls were trying to protect.

Tripping over that thing had probably saved Chaz's life. As he
ducked forward a little, wobbling and trying to regain his balance,
he felt the tips of the dezo owl's talons part his hair. It had dived
at him but missed, and though Chaz should have immediately taken
advantage of this situation he got a faceful of the bottom of the
bird's nest. He was tipped upside-down with his legs sticking up,
then he slid forward and got into a crouch, trying not to slip on the
jumbled piles of bones. When the owl doubled back again he let it
have it with a concentrated githu technique.

Wren leaped into the battle without announcing himself and
released his flare laser at the dezo owl that was bothering Chaz. The
githu and the flare struck the monster from two different directions
and did what two opposing energy forces were wont to do; cancel each
other out. This resulted with the dezo owl screaming one final scream
before it disintegrated into a mishmash of invisible particles and
gore. Feathers were scattered every which way by the breath of the
storm.

“Chaz, are you damaged?” Wren called and took a step
forward, but had not noticed that he had sunk up to his ankles in
another crust of ice. It held under the force of his momentum and
knocked the android off his balance, so Wren tipped over and went
crashing into the snow. This would have been funny had they not been
in combat, yet Chaz and Rika did not have the time to laugh. There
were still three of the four enemies left to dispose of.

One of them was still squirming and flailing in Rika's grasp. She
was trying her hand at wrestling and believed that she had at least
broken one of the creature's wings, so it couldn't get away from her.
The girl was trying to get both of her hands around its throat so
that she could cleanly break its neck. The talons were in the way,
and if her hands came within five inches of the owl's face it would
stretch its long neck out and then snap with its cruelly hooked beak.
Rika wanted to kill it in a simple and clean manner, with no
unnecessary pain for the bird, but instead she had to rise to her
feet and then regretfully crush its chest with the thick sole of her
boot. The dry rustling snap of its ribs made her feel sick to her
very stomach.

The ice crust shattered as Wren kicked at it with his trapped leg
and then lifted his head from the snowdrift. “Chaz?” He
repeated and for a moment was blinded by a comparatively rough blast
of wind, then his surroundings came back into focus. Chaz was
standing beside the large bird's nest, wiping off streaks of the dead
owl's splatter from his face. He looked unharmed. Wren stood too and
sought harder, firmer ground.

Chaz heard his name being called and saw Wren edging towards the
higher ground, not quite mindful of the enemies in the area. He was
walking on solid, tough ice, but that was all it was. Ice. Rika
turned to look at Chaz and he saw the clear traces of guilty tears in
her eyes, but she didn't look angry. She looked sad, and wild. Chaz
regarded her with wide eyes and felt like he wouldn't be able to tear
his gaze away.

But he did so anyway when he heard the screams of the remaining
dezo owls crying out in unison, followed by the artificial whir of
Wren's shoulder mortar plates opening. That could only mean one
thing, that Wren was planning on using his burst rockets unit in the
middle of a blizzard. What kind of chaos would that cause? The
android must have figured that his fire-based assault would be
similar to the napalm charges of the ice digger. It'd be effective,
but dangerous. He was hunched over, the mortar cannons protruding
from each shoulder.

Fire spat into the air and was immediately lost to the naked eye,
except that one of the charges grazed the outstretched wing of a dezo
owl and the monster burst into flames. It turned into a writhing
fireball that fell out of the air, smelling ever so slightly of
roasted chicken. Wren looked up slowly to see where his attack had
gone and was struck in the face by the burning bird, surprising him
if not hurting him. The final monster flew free as the rest of the
napalm rained down around the android, striking against and hissing
into the ice. Some of the fire was extinguished by the snow but a
great deal of it weakened the ice beneath Wren's feet, rendering it
treacherous and unsafe.

While brushing away embers Wren was unaware of Chaz running
towards their last foe, his sword lightening and darkening with
wavering energy. He had a skill cooking right up his sleeve and Chaz
looked ready for business. He had yet to claim a monster kill all for
himself, but those birds just moved too damn fast. It was time to
slow them down a bit.

“No, don't!” Rika cried out, vainly trying to keep her
winter coat from being blown open by the winds. Her intuition wasn't
quite clear but she could still see the great mistake that Chaz was
likely to make. If he used his earth skill against the monster he
would surely freeze it in place, but to do it on weakening ice at a
particular angle would surely cause a great...

Crack! That sound was
heard even amidst the howling background noise. It was the sound of
solid ice splintering as Chaz drove the blade of his sword straight
into its melting heart. There was relative quiet for a time as the
motions of the dezo owl were slowed to a halt, then from beneath
Chaz's boots he heard the deep rumble of ancient glacier ice coming
back to life. All of a sudden it felt like Chaz had swallowed a fat
hairy caterpillar; his throat felt all prickly and too tight. Wren
glanced at the ground below him and then back up at Chaz. A widening
fissure separated Wren from the others. The cliff was breaking away.
The android looked utterly blank, as usual.

“I am falling.” He said, and Wren was correct.

The puncture of Chaz's sword into the swell of the hill created a
series of stress fractures that had cracked all the way down to the
bottom of the cliff. As the large plane of ice dropped down from the
others Wren took a couple of steps away from Chaz in order to adjust
to the change in his center of balance, his arms spaced out from his
body carefully. Soon he did not even have ground to stand on as
gravity and the air currents knocked him off the broken floor.
Without making a single cry of protest, the android fell from the
cliff, into the darkness below.

Chaz was only kneeling at the edge of the precipice, the hilt of
his sword in his trembling hands, staring at what he had done.
“Wren!” He
screamed with all the breath in his lungs, standing and losing all
sense of his personal safety as he tried to step off the cliff and
save his friend.

He would have done this without
much of a second thought if Rika had not stepped up in time and saved
him from a certain death. She reached out from behind Chaz and
grabbed roughly at his forearm, yanking him backwards with excessive
force. Chaz tipped back on one heel, his other foot seeking some kind
of support in the open air. Rika threw Chaz flat on his back and
while he was struggling to prop himself up on his elbows they both
heard the great resounding crash of tons of ice slapping and smashing
at the bottom of the chasm below.

The storm was clearing, but only very slightly, not enough for it
to be the end. Rika looked ahead heedlessly, perhaps trying to
register what had happened to her mentor, her bright pink hair
flapping in the wind. Beneath the newly stunted cliff the ravine was
circular in shape, and very wide. If it was what Rika thought it was,
a snow worm burrow, then it might even be up to several miles deep.
Not even Wren could survive a fall that devastating. Rika bit her lip
and turned to Chaz, now on the verge of tears. “Stop it. We
can't afford to lose you too.”

The weight of what he had just caused caught up to Chaz's mind.
Because he had not thought his actions through he might have killed
one of his friends. His most important friend. Chaz jumped up and
scrabbled over to the edge of the cliff again, flattening himself
against the ground and looking down, desperate to see the android on
a ledge of some kind, or relentlessly climbing back up the cliff
wall. Wren was practically a palman tank, he was supposed to be
virtually indestructible. Could something so basic and stupid
possibly kill him? If so, then it was Chaz's fault. All his.

“Wren!” The
hunter cried again and it seemed to echo all the way down the ravine.
“Can you hear me? Answer!”

Silence.

Rika took Chaz's hand and effortlessly
pulled him up from the ground. She was weeping now, just as she had
wept for Seed, but she also had a small idea. It was a long shot but
better than nothing. “Come on, follow me!” She ordered,
and they ran back to the ice digger together, Chaz teetering on the
edge of a fully-blown panic attack. Rika tried to take control of the
situation while Chaz could not. “If Wren really is still alive
and not unconscious, we should be able to reach him using the ice
digger's radio. He can pick up narrowband frequency within a ten mile
radius!”

“Oh gods Rika, I didn't mean
for that to happen! It's all my fault! If Wren is dead then it's
all my fault!” Chaz
howled.

“Keep
control of yourself!” Rika shouted, but her heart reached out
to him. She wanted to put her arms around Chaz and console him, for
she understood Chaz's feelings. He didn't want to lose another close
friend, just as he had lost Alys not that long ago. The numan girl
managed a little smile through her weeping. “Don't say things
like that. Wren wouldn't want you to think that way. Now hurry up,
there still might be a chance!”

Every time that
Chaz managed to get close to something he could treasure, it was
always taken from him, held away at an arm's length. But please not
Wren, not something that he was only beginning to appreciate. Just as
he and Wren had run to Rika's aid in the Air Castle, now Chaz and
Rika were doing the very same thing for him.

The
blond hunter steeled himself and nodded at Rika's words. “Okay,
I'm right behind you.” He said.
- 8
- 9
- 10
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