Welcome to Gaia! ::

Erytheia arrived on his wonder in the exact same place he had left it after the vision from a few weeks ago. What he had seen had not left his mind since. But, despite his rumination, the knight was no closer to understanding what he had seen.

Perhaps, if he came back to the same exact location where it had occurred, something — anything — would come to him. He needed answers. But he knew not where he could find them.

As he approached the Star Mount Beacon, he saw that the ground under it had fully healed. There was not a trace of what he had found before of what the magical disturbance had wrought. The only thing that showed that anything at all had happened was the fact that his ancestor’s starseed floated at the base of the cliff that was the highest part of the whole island.

It had been unearthed after a thousand years — waiting all that time for him and now ready to return to the Cauldron.

But not before he found the answers to the questions that had arises during the time he resonated with the Code.

“I wonder if you are fully healed.” He looked to the Code inside the crystal. “You look just like you always have. Then why do I still feel a sense of impending doom?”


✪

The Code Piece speaking was always to Erytheia a bit of a shock. Even though he had heard it many times, it usually spoke when it was on Olympus or the Moon. Hearing it here, on his wonder, was always different for him. Intimate and wonderful and strange all in equal measure.

“My heart is always full of worry.” He spoke softly. “But you know that better than anyone.”

The Code sounded different than it did on the Moon or Olympus. It was a small, maybe insignificant change, but he could sense it.

He sighed. No need to hedge with the Code. It always got to the core of an issue fast and so would he.

“This time feels different. You saw the eye, didn’t you? When we resonated.”


✪

Erytheia watched as the mist moved and twirled slowly. Its energy was always captivating. It was like the Code was always looking at you, but with no eyes.

“I have never seen anything like it before. The tendrils. The eye. It de—-”

The knight had to stop himself for a moment. Because, as a transcended knight, it almost made his stomach sick.

“It devoured a whole star. What if it comes here?”


✪

“No matter how long I have been a knight, it seems there are always things I haven’t seen.” He recalled Almadel and how he was unplaceable and how he seemed to come and go at will. There were other people in the universe like him, he was sure. With the Vangardians and the senshi awoken from space and now this. How could there not be monsters, too? Unknowable and from places he could not even go.

Erytheia wanted to be reassured by the Code, but he knew much better now than he did when he was younger that the Code rarely offered such.

He was twenty-five now. What did they say about growth? All of it happened before then.

The knight was not getting any better able to handle any of this than now. But why did this make him so… uneasy.

“We must hope it does not. We are a Cosmic anomaly.” And praise Cosmos for it! He hadn’t seen her in a long time which he had learned was a good thing. That meant she could tend to the Cauldron where all starseeds were born and returned when those that held them died.

“What can I do to prepare? Even as I am now, bonded to this wonder and in tune with its power, I still only have the power of healing.”


✪

The Code was asking for his weapon. He wondered why. It was rare that it asked to see it. He knew the Code knew its knights and their weapons intimately. It was the source of their power as he had felt so much before when it had briefly stopped working with those of all the other knights.

“My bow. Yes. Here.”

He held it out for the expanding Code. He watched with wonder as it grew to twice its size. He could felt its warmth plentiful on his skin.


✪