AoaA - Ch 3 - Homeward Bound

Chapter Three - Homeward Bound


Kratos’s POV:

It had been decided between Colette’s parents, the Mayor, and I that we would leave the following morning for the Triet Ruins, the spot where the Seal of Fire was said to be. Lloyd and Genis were both told to come to the town at noon to meet us… but that was just something to keep them occupied until we left and before they woke up. This wasn’t some kind of fieldtrip for children…
I was to travel in a trio; accompanying the Chosen and I was a white-haired half-elf who just happened to be a very excellent healer. She was the older sister of Lloyd’s best friend, Genis, and in a way, it was obvious that the two albinos were related. When we finally left the following morning, the white-haired healer and the Chosen, along with her parents, came to greet me at the inn.
“Are you ready to go?” asked Raine, clutching her rod in her right hand while holding her small pack in the other, She seemed… intent on something.
I nodded to assure her. “Yes… let us leave now.”
“Are you sure we should just leave Lloyd like this?” Colette pouted, looking back in the direction of the brunette’s house… Dirk’s house. “And Genis, will he be ok by himself?”
“Genis will be fine on his own. He’s a smart boy,” replied Raine, not bothering to take a last look at the village before passing the gates. “As for Lloyd… I don’t think anyone cares.”
“But…”
“That’s enough, Colette. Let’s go,” Raine urged on.
For one of the first times in my entire life, the whole world seemed silent as the caressing breeze let off a relaxing sigh… as did the Chosen.
“… I’m sorry, Lloyd,” she whispered before turning around to follow us.
The journey of the seventh Chosen and her companions… Our adventure had begun.


The greenery around us quickly turned to a desert with gruesome sandstorms that lased at our faces and stung our eyes with sand. It seemed to bother the two women more than it bothered me.
“This heat is exhausting all of my energy,” panted the albino as she shielded her eyes from the sun. Indeed, it looked like she was beginning to gain a sunburn, and her eyes were scrunched up as she squinted to see into the distance.
“Triet isn’t too far from here,” I tried my best to smile and offer some comfort, but failed to do so, for I lost the will to smile years ago. The face resulted in more of a frown than anything.
“Is something wrong, Kratos?” asked Colette, blinking her cerulean blue eyes as she walked between Raine and I with a small wobble in her step. It was a shame that the Chosen was so clumsy… Wherever we went, it seemed that she either managed to create a hole in the wall, trip over a rock, or both… well, it was a miracle that she didn’t die in battle often, although there was the exception of her falling during a performance of her Item Thief technique.
“No, nothing is wrong.” I affirmed both her and myself. “I’m fine.”
“Alright…” Colette sighed before turning her gaze southward and towards the nearing village. She seemed to perk at the sight of it. “Oh, Professor Sage, look!”
The healer groaned as she yet again shielded her eyes in order to stare across the desert. “Please, tell me,” she moaned. “that’s Triet. I’m dying out here in this heat…”
“Yes, it won’t be long now… but in the meantime, here,” I opened my canteen of water and offered it to the withered albino, who accepted it most gratefully. It was then as I watched her take a swig of the clear liquid, that I realized how hard it must have been on the two for having to endure such harsh conditions. I guess not feeling hot or cold… was a plus of being an angel.
Raine gave the canteen back to me with a gracious smile, “Thank you, Kratos… oh, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“What were you doing before you joined up with us? Before you saved the children from those Desian soldiers?”
“…” I was unsure of how to answer this odd question… what I could tell her, and what I could not. “I… have been a mercenary for some time now… and I had recently finished escorting a… ahh… a young woman to Hima. She… was a cleric, much like you.”
“Oh really?” Raine raised an eyebrow. “Did the trip go well?”
“Well… other than the one ambush near Luin, it went smoothly.”
The woman seemed taken aback. “Ambush? By how many? What kind? Were there any ruins?”
My brow quirked as Colette blinked, both of us staring at the albino, whether it was out of amusement of confusion… I wasn’t sure. Perhaps the sage had not meant to say that…?
“No…” I answered slowly, unsure of what to say. “There were no ruins.”
“Awww…” Raine seemed to droop in disappointment at my reply. “That’s a shame, because I was hoping to study some of the structure-“
“Professor Sage,” Colette pointed again, “wha-what’s that?”
Both Professor Raine and I looked ahead towards a strengthening sand twister that was growing in the distance… and heading directly towards us. The funnel of tiny grains were steadily approaching at a neck-breaking speed that would have cast anything aside as if it were nothing more than a small treeling that had managed to plant its tiny roots, only to be yanked up again.
I immediately pulled out of its sheath, a steel katana with a small turquoise gem encrusted in its hilt. It wasn’t the same as Flamberge, which I had stored away on Welgaia, but it was a good blade none-the-less.
“Stand back, Chosen” I commanded to the small blonde child before the white-haired sage stepped forward to join me in my plight against the oncoming beast of sand.
“I’ll help,” was all the professor said before turning to face the twister.
I sighed. “If you insist…”
It seemed that the closer it got, the more visible the sand funnel became, and I soon could tell that this was no ordinary twister. This was the kind of menace that holstered a disastrous terror… something that was uncommon to the human eye…
I sensed a great foreboding…
“… Get down! Now!” I yelled quite suddenly, scaring the two females but effectively snaring their attention; they quickly dove onto their stomachs, as did I, just in time to avoid a jet of white-hot fire that passed over out heads. Although I could not feel it, I could tell that the hairs on the back of my neck were barely licked by the scorching flames, shriveled by the insane madness that this new threat brought.
“What in the world?” Raine hissed from my left, clutching her wooden staff in her hands as she tried to get up to see what had just tried to obliterate us, but I quickly pushed her back down.
“Whatever you do,” I said in a low voice, “do not look into the third eye, on its tail… this must be Spiritua’s Manticore… I, myself, have not seen one in ages-“
“Then how do you know?” countered the blonde Chosen.
I gritted my teeth as I could feel the Manticore approaching. “I was attacked by one once. A friend and I had been passing through the-“
“You had friends?” Wow, they must have been really strong!” Colette beamed, and I had the sudden urge to shove her head into the sand for her ignorance.
“Now is not the time!” I growled, shielding my eyes with one hand as I gripped my blade with the other. “Prepare yourselves!”
I immediately got up, as did the sage, and the two of us stood in front of the Chosen to block any direct hits from the monster that had began to emerge from the twister.
“Maybe if we asked it nicely-“
“No!” Both the albino and I yelled in unison, cutting off Colette before she could finish her suggestion.
Out of the twisting funnel emerged a set of scaly claws the size of a fourth of the exspheres on the Great Tethe’Alla  Bridge packed into a sphere; even one of the ivory talons alone looked capable of dismantling anything that stood in its path. It created a fearsome terror that would strike ghastly images into the hearts of even the strongest and most courageous men.
Following the distorting claws came arms covered in thick hairs of crimson red, ultimately the color of the rich blood that flowed through its veins; each one of the tiny rivlettes extended to its fullest as it covered the whole expansion of the deathly creature’s surface. The whole arm of the Manticore, even its legs, chest, and tail, seemed to be covered with the dark red strands
The eye on the end of the beast’s tail was obviously something one would not be used to seeing in these parts. It was unusually large, making the tail look like it was going to fall over and let the eye drop to the ground with a dull splat… one with no emotion what-so-ever. The eye looked like a typical Gorgon’s Eye, but the red fur covered the eyelids, and the monster’s iris was a captivating liquid green.
A frilly, spread-out collar, much like a cobra’s hood, adorned the neck of the creature that was making its way out of the cyclone, making it look like some sort of strange Australlian lizard.
Then… there were its eyes; two solid orbs of gray and black, the pupils hollow and yellow like crescent moons. They had a growing hatred in their depths, perhaps even a pinch of spite within them.
“Its… huge…” Colette gasped at the monstrous size of the creature. I too, had to say that this manticore was unusually larger than the last one I had fought with Yuan when we had passed through the area. This manticore had to at least be half as old as I was… close to two-thousand years old.
Although all three of us were stunned by the spectacular image of the beast, I knew that just standing there and watching it approach was not an option, so I took my place in front of the two and raised my blade again.
“Stay behind me,” I cautioned. “This is no ordinary manticore.”
“Ok…” Colette nodded, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Raine nod as well.
Then… the manticore spoke.
“Here be thy grave, thy eternal disposure into Hell and beyond the present,” it said to me, standing tall and proud on its four majestic limbs. “Is there anything you wish to say before you are handed over to Spiritua, Lord and Angel of Death?”
There was a small bout of silence before I replied, “There is but one thing I wish to ask of you.”
“Speak.”
“In what way,” I spoke slowly as I raised my sword and turned it vertically to make it appear as if my face was split into two halves, “would you prefer to die?”
At this, the creature howled in rage and raised one of its mighty paws to smack me down as if I was nothing more than some shroom that was randomly placed alongside the path… yet, to go down like that would be considered insulting to the Seraphim race, or so said Yuan, and I had to agree. Thus I turned my blade just the slightest so I could counter the beast’s hefty blow.
A loud clash of steel meeting ivory sounded through the desert terrain, whipping up many of the sand particles and casting them around us in any way it possibly could. Our eyes locked as I pushed harder on my blade and attempted to force  the manticore back far enough to knock him off balance and take advantage of the battle… although the size difference would possibly pose a challenge. Then again, to me… it didn’t matter.
If there was something I enjoyed the most… it was a good fight that involved looking in the face of death.

Raine’s POV:

The wind was at a fearsome howl as Kratos held his ground against the terrifying beast that had threatened to dispose of us so brutally, and the only reason I believed it could was of the way Kratos regarded it as an object of ill fortune and destruction. The way the strong-willed mercenary began to charge one of his hands with electricity while fending off the manticore with the other was indeed a very skilled style in which reflected his obvious years of training. I began to wonder just exactly who this amazing man was.
My idle thoughts were soon disposed of as I heard the beast exhale an un-earthly cry that clawed and tore at the heavens like it was loaded with agony, and my impression was soon reassured as I caught sight of Spiritua’s manticore reeling back in pain from the intense force of the lightning bolt that was cast at him. The ripples were clearly visible over the great beast’s hide as the electricity coursed through not only its body, but its veins and spirit as well.
Kratos didn’t leave his opponent much time to recover as he raised his sword to strike, chocolate eyes filled with a passion for judgment that only he could cast. The steel blade rose upwards, disappearing into an indented cavern that became obvious only when the rich crimson liquid splattered over Kratos’s outfit, and even in his hair. The red droplets slowly inched their way down his strands of red wine, falling off their tips with an eerie, yet divine nature that only an angel could grasp.
As he pulled the katana back out of the unearthly hide, the flow of blood seemed to increase as it no longer had something to block the path to the outer world. It yearned for the large amounts of space and oxygen that the outside provided, and the open wound was only willing to grant the crimson flow passage.
It was as if that one blow… that one single blow seemed to drain the entire gourd of energy from the monster’s carcass, leaving it weak and vulnerable to the swordsman’s tactful blows and strikes. Kratos took every possibility and performed a perfect back flip, knocking the manticore’s head back with a roundhouse kick and followed it up with a slash that ran from the monster’s collar bone to the underside of its bottom jaw, and even though the blood of the beast washed over his abdomen, it only seemed to fuel him more.
The monster of Spiritua howled in a mixture of rage and agony, flailing its claws out in a series of rapid slashes at the knight of judgment, hoping to deal at least something before it was most brutally vanquished. Its strokes and blows were uneven, each one landing not on the parrying warrior, but far away from his body.
Sparks lofted to mix with the sand that cruised through the air, creating a small sparkle of life as claw met steel for one last time…
“I’ll kill you!” the manticore hissed in rage.
“I think not…” I could tell by the fiery passion in his eyes that Kratos believed strongly in his own actions. “Your time is up.”
With a last and fatal attempt, the creature raised a lengthy arm and exposed the left side of its chest to Kratos, leaving the target wide open for a direct hit. Whether it had done this out of recklessness or out of self surrender, I was not quite sure.
Kratos saw the opportunity just as quickly as I did and twirled the katana one in his firm grasp, twice, and a final thrice before he cried, “Sonic Thrust!!” and shoved his weapon into the beast’s chest.
I grimaced as I listened to the ripping and tearing of the manticore’s heart tissue as the blade tore through and out the other end, despite the large monstrous size of the creature. The snap of the hilt sliding into Kratos’s hold once again brought me to attention and snared it, and as I watched mercenary land on his feet gracefully, I began to think that this man before me was not exactly who we had first put him up to be.


Kratos’s POV:

After tending to whatever wounds I possessed, Raine and the Chosen of Mana followed me to Triet. I ignored the strange looks of passersby, knowing that the sight of a man soaked in blood was most likely not a very pleasant sight to the common eye.
“That place looks good,” whispered the blonde girl as she spotted the inn just ahead.
“Yes, let’s make a stop for the night and head for the seal tomorrow morning,” Raine answered with a nod.
As the two females headed inside, I noticed a familiar looking poster next to the inn door. It had a picture with a brunette male that looked an awful lot like…
And indeed enough, right under the picture were the words, “Wanted: Lloyd Irving.”