Welcome to Gaia! ::

The loud audible CRACK! made Yu jump, and she swung her head in the direction of the sound.
Oh geez, was the crystal disintegrating further? That... wasn't good.
She watched the falling fragments with a sense of trepidation, which only increased as something ELSE came out.

A wave of nausea hit her, coupled with the unease of the shattering crystal and the figure that seemed to have appeared from it. The core of the crystal perhaps??

Gritting her teeth, she approached it.
It had to be contained. The crystal MUST be restored. Or else it.... it....

-----------------------

"Yu!"
...
"YU!!"

There was a loud, audible slap, and Yu snapped out of her reverie, cheek stinging.
"Yu! I swear to god..."

The horsewoman slowly turned her head, a hand nursing her cheek as she stared at her pink-haired friend.
She too was clutching her hand, a look of remorse on her face.

"Yu... I'm sorry for hitting you but... you need to stop blaming yourself! It's not your fault!"
"But he... he was so angry! What if... what if something happens?! He-"
"He's not a child, Yu, and you need to stop treating him like one. Yuun's old enough to make his own decision. You need to stop being so controlling."
"I..."

Echo smiled.
"I know. As his older sister, it's only natural you'd worry. But like I said, you need to stop mollycoddling him. It's only natural he sought a path of his own, with you as Scholar and I as Artisan, wouldn't it only make sense he walked the path of an Imperial Soldier?"
"But he's not ready!! He-"

Echo huffed and placed her hands on her hips.
"Who are you to say he's not ready? Let him make his own choices. Good or bad, he has to learn. Mistakes must be made sometimes. He has to learn how to take care of himself. He won't always have you around to protect him, nor is it something he'd want, so... give him a chance, won't you?"
"I..."

Yu looked away.
"I hope you're right. I don't want to regret this."

-----------------------

Yuun... Echo...
HAD she made the right choice?
She never saw either of them again after the clans fell, but... a part of her wanted to hold onto hope, hope that they would both be fine. That they'd be safe.

Please... that's all I ask for.

Merope was on his way towards the portals when he heard the crystal began to break. His training kicked in; an arrow was notched and drawn and pointed towards the crystal before the sound even registered. His hands began to shake as he was drawn in --

-- this is how the world ends --

he couldn't see.

Merope closed his eyes; opened them. There wasn't a difference between the expansive white or what he saw behind his eyelids. He clung to his bow and sheathed his arrow. There wasn't anything to attack from what he could see. All there was, all that existed was white. Endless, expansive white that was unending. He was going to die.

He was going to die.

Merope curled up into a ball and hugged his knees, staring. He was going to die here, alone and shamed. He was nothing, he was a coward, he was--

"...You'll get the courage. I have faith in you."

He remembered someone telling him that. He remembered the sensation of a hand reaching across the table in reassurance. He remembered what she looked like --



-- okay so maybe she didn't look exactly like that, but Merope remembered the important part: he had someone who believed in him. He was pretty sure his philosopher teacher mentioned something about never being along so long as you have memories of the people you spent time with. Or something like that. Merope really, really needed to pay better attention in class. But... wasn't there more to this?

Merope squeezed his eyes shut and began to think.





+5 Boss Damage
Total boss damage so far: 85

Come to think of it, there was a time Merope was on the run from the War clan. In his defense it seemed like a very, very good idea at the time.

"Okay," Merope said out loud into the void. "Look, I don't know if anyone else is out there but lemme tell you a story. First, my name's Merope, nice to meet you. Second, I'm really, really bad at studying and learning, so my teachers tend to give me extra work to try and slough through. I guess they think that the more I do it, the more likely I'll get it?"

Merope shrugged. "It's weird, I don't get it either. Anyway, I tend to do a bit better when it comes to the physical stuff. Running, drills, archery? That sort of thing? It's easier for me. Or at least I don't forget it as quickly as reading. That's how it is usually."

The imperial soldier sat up, "One day though, I was doing a pretty terrible job of it. It was dodge training, and I was getting hit more than I was getting... not-hit, y'know? So my teacher told me to go practice. It's hard to go practice unless you have someone to practice with. I guess a sane person would've asked a classmate, but... well..."

Merope ran a hand through his hair. "I guess I bit off more than I could chew. See, I went down to the War floors and found a War horseman who looked like they weren't busy and asked them for help. War is kind of, like. Y'know, they're experts in the art of combat and things. It's not an elegant solution, but I figured asking for their help would be a shortcut to getting good."

"Aaand it worked!" Merope beamed. "Granted I had to take shelter in a friend's room while they chased me all over the place, but... man! You should've seen his face! Ah! My friend's face, not the War clansmen's faces."



"Ahhh that was a fun time. Good, good learning experience."





+5 Boss Damage
Total boss damage so far: 95

Tanita had run towards the THING that had come out of the Crystal. Oh by the first Clansmen, it was worse then she'd ever feared. Somehow the crystal had... hatched?... a monster. A giant, huge, terrifying monster, and she knew they had to do something about it, or everyone would surely suffer.

And then it swallowed her, and suddenly she was alone, totally and completely. She was in a terrifyingly endless white space, something she had never seen before, and somewhere she never wanted to be. If she had been scared, with everything that had been going on before, now she was beyond scared. Where was she? What was this place? Why did she feel like it was trying to swallow everything she was? She took deep breaths, closing her eyes and focusing on herself, who she was, who she cared for, who she believed in.

That was what mattered, right? If she kept her friends and family in her heart, she'd find a way back to them. She tried calling their faces to mind, and, horrifyingly, found herself drawing a blank. No, that was not acceptable. She had to try HARDER... She had to come back to them, safe.

Safe. That word... that word triggered a memory of some one ELSE using that word, recently. She focused, focused hard and suddenly the memory of holding her cellphone in her hand came to mind, the memory of receiving a simple message from a friend that had made her feel warm, despite the direness of the situation.



That's right. It came from Liya. She opened her eyes, and snarled into the great white expanse "Is this your best shot? Because I have more memories and I refuse to let you take me!"





+5 Boss Damage
Total Boss Damage so Far: 105

This is horrible. thought Hushby as he was surrounded by the infinite white space. There was absolutely nowhere to hide. It brought him back to an unsettling place. A memory that was always resonating in the back of his mind. A moment from his youth where the Death horseman felt he was at his weakest state.

Something was preventing him from remembering the exact details. He knew for certain that he was hiding. Creatures were searching for him. He didn’t want to look directly at them. Some twisted paranoia gave him the idea that if he looked at their faces, they would be able to feel his eyes gazing at them. He peeked through what looked like the mouth of some dead beast and looked for an escape route. Instead, he saw that he was surrounded. He didn’t want to think about what would happen to him if he was found.


Just go away!

He was different then. That was before he had begun his training to become a full-fledged Ashen Soldier. A position that would suit him now. A harvester of FEAR who hides to surprise foes. If he had the skills that he does now, he wouldn’t have been afraid. He would’ve summoned his weapon a cut through those creatures. He would’ve seen the terror in their eyes as he ripped every bit of FEAR from them.

He still went back to that place when he was out in crowds. It was keeping him from moving forward. But being pulled out in the open by his new friend was helping him combat those inhibiting memories. The only thing he wanted to hide from now was his own weakness.



+5 Boss Damage
Total boss damage so far: 115

The Death Horseman looked up sharply at the sound of the red crystal cracking. Blank, stoic, dead-pan, Terr was none of those now. Blue eye were wide in horror, jaw hung slack as fragments rained down from the Dusk's source of FEAR. The darkness dripped out, coagulated, formed into a creature that made the jewel maker's already pale skin turn bone white at the very sight.

The others didn't hesitate to attack, anger, indignation, despair pushing them to rise up to resist, even destroy this invader. Terr was not one such Horseman. But even if he trembled where he stood, he pulled on the mask of stoicism harder, wrapping the mantle of detachment tighter around him as the crystal shed more and more fragments.

He stood his ground and yet it almost seemed like he ran. He was certain he never took a step and yet he found himself approaching the thing.

The world went white and Terr didn't know what to do. Summoning his weapon felt like a waste of FEAR. It was hard to see how long he was in that white void. There didn't seem to be a sense of time here, wherever, whenever this was and he wanted out.

But for him to escape he was supposed to sacrifice a memory? He sighed, deeply, and muttered Fine. What sort of memory would he be willing to part with or have damaged in the event this whole thing backfired on him?

It was one of the earlier pieces he'd made: twisted and awkward and pathetic. Terr himself couldn't remember what it was even supposed to be in the first place. He couldn't bring himself to scrap it, however.

+5 Boss Damage
Total boss damage so far: 125

Siluhe sighed in relief when they worked towards the same goal to restore order into their common floors respectively. When it seemed that The Dusk was normal once again, the audible crack broke every hope into pieces. She flew out from the windows and rushed towards the red crystal. The window not far from the collapsing crystal captured the reflection of her started expression so well.

As the crack drilled upwards and deeper, red fragments fell out from the sky, like red tears of the crystal itself. When she mourned for their unknown future, she spotted something diffused from the base of the crystal. Something obviously not part of it.

The petite horseman tried to get closer to that something but then everything around seemed to experience a distortion and slowed. Was that all the things changing? Was that it was her who felt the surroundings dizzily turning about her? She couldn't tell - only a void of absolute whitness existed.

Siluhe had said it when some Famine horsemen explained to her the concept of hive, she disliked to be alone. In the infinite voidness she felt inevitably alone, no friends to talk to, no birds could follow her singing. That feeling was the worst, she hugged and buried herself in her wide pair of wings to seek comfort. It was of no big use. She flew in high speed, attempted to find an exit to no avail.

It was overwhelming and she was helpless, without a clue what she shall do. Siluhe tried to fight against it, she thought of her friends and those she met in part-time jobs, just everything gave her more determination to push back.

Being alone was scary, a fear that she could lose herself. There was a thought that she had to remember who she was.



She became an orphan when she was still a fledgling. She was a stray rescued by the jungle king, Allen. He was a strong and wild man. Like a stray kitten, at first she was distant but one could find she actually stalked behind the horseman in the darkness.

Watching Allen was an inspiring experience, she memorized his movements and practiced herself at night, then looked at him again the next day. Not only that, he also taught her the importance of friendship and family, it was a warm thing.

Her poor spying skill wasn't successful, the man already knew his little tail would catch her out of surprised and started a hide-and-seek game randomly with her fleeing away. When she was out of breathe, he would catch her with his strong arms with a powerful hug. She would never forget it was the first and warmest thing she felt. As for her family, she was too young to remember a bit sadly.

From there on, she opened herself to the rest. She became enthusiatic in making friends, she visited other clans and got along with many others. Her life turned better and happier because of the man.

He was like the Sun that radiated warmth and heat no one could escape from. She admired him. Siluhe knew she couldn't be a little sun, so she hoped to be the stars, glowing in darkness that reminded everyone they were not alone.

Yes.

She was never alone.

Ever she can't see them, they were there, like the stars at day time.





+5 Boss Damage

Total Boss Damage so far: 135

The next memory was less vivid but no less powerful than the first. It started with the sound of bottles clinking against one another, glass against glass, a sound that had been ringing in Camixi's ears since she was a child. Glass against glass was something that made music with every step Ven took from a hundred sources. Beads on her clothing, bottles on her belt, vials full of dangerous test fluid that should never be touched.

'Sunbeam, don't touch that!'

'Little love that is not for you. Take this instead.'

Colored beads, drops of colored water in tiny vials, had hung over her crib and then her bed. But the bottles that appeared before her had a different purpose entirely. It was Nothing's voice that came to Camixi next, quiet, smooth, unhurried as he explained to her about the nectars.

Each one had a source but they were not always the same. She would drink them at her own risk, of course, but each one was a lesson in and of itself. Each one would teach her something about herself, about the world, about her mentor.

Color came into the white space with a poof of too-familiar dust covering the brilliant shades of nectar inside of the fancy decanters. Her fingertip smeared through the dust and she smiled for the first time. "Yes, Noth. I remember."




+5 Boss Damage
Total Boss Damage so far: 145