Chapter 116

The duty of the warrior

Yuan opened his eyes and sat up in a panic. He almost had to wonder what was happening and why he had decided to lay down on his bed and close his eyes, but the familiarity wasn't altogether lost on him. It was true he hadn't slept in quite a long time- at least, not a full, unconscious sleep, but it was nice to know that he still could. He had little doubt that the ability to drift off for several hours at a time without worrying or thinking would eventually come to an end though.

A murmur sounded from beside him. He turned his head to his left to spy a sleeping redhead with her head propped up against his bed. Yuan closed his eyes, trying to recall the events of yesterday more clearly. The obvious reason they had ventured into his dimensional room came first. Waiting out the mana of Mertelle was the easiest way to fight her. Fighting her would have been dangerous for many reasons, but most of all, he wasn't sure he could have.

His unspoken words of yesterday with Sheelos came to mind. She had naturally been furious at his unsaid reasoning and pacifist approach. She had likely guessed he would not be able to fight Mertelle simply because of the way she looked. He couldn't deny to himself that there was some truth in that, but he still couldn't be sure if she knew the other reason; that reason being the other person he had met yesterday.

He grimaced in thought while absently getting up and wandering over to gaze at his book collection. Botta's father had lived an extremely long life for a half-elf, just as he had claimed the time he had met him, shortly before his death.

What had initially been a meeting of convenience to ensure his operations had not been compromised since the old man's incorrigible (not to mention rebellious) teenage son had seen him land from a flight in the middle of a forest by accident had eventually turned into friendship.

Dotta had been adamant they had met before, and had obviously seen him as a somewhat kindred spirit since they had both lived long lives. Yuan had sworn blindly until he'd been blue in the face that they had never met. He'd done the same when explaining that he would have never told him, a civilian, that he was a seraphim. It had not been a topic even mildly up for debate for revealing back then, due to the far more devout extremes the Church of Martel followers went to when trying to find the next Chosen. Nevertheless Dotta had most certainly known about him, and not because his son had told him. Yuan had made sure to take Botta back to his home immediately to ensure he did not tell a soul about what he had witnessed- even his own father- or risk a painful death.

Yuan had first thought it would be easiest to murder the old Dotta and his son in their sleep after they had graciously offered to share their small home and food with him for the night. By that time, he'd had the blood of many young Chosen just like Colette on his hands, so he hadn't figured killing two more innocents would have been much different. Unfortunately, he had been wrong. Somewhere in his black heart, he took pity on them. They were two half-elves, obviously running from persecution, just trying to live despite how obviously the world wished for them to die.

Annoyed, but knowing he needed to get to the truth of the matter behind the old man, he decided to hang around. Dotta had seemed glad for a fishing partner, even if Botta had very obviously been in a constant state of jealousy at his ease of getting bites just by letting the light of his wings shine on the water for a couple of minutes and then casting his line. Yuan still didn't know exactly why it worked so well, but he'd told the father and son that it had to do with the mana. It had seemed as plausible as any other reason he could come up with.

Every time Dotta had asked about his life and how he had become a seraphim, he had used the opportunity to very bluntly ask how he knew what he was. The old man had very stubbornly repeated the same answer over and over again, saying that he'd found out the first time they'd met, down near the Village of the Elves. To Yuan, that was what had made the story the most implausible. He endeavoured to make a habit of staying away from Heimdall as much as possible. Not that it was difficult to. A half-elf avoiding a village of snooty elves came as naturally as a mouse hiding from a birds nest. He had snapped at Dotta more than once for saying such ridiculous things, but before long he the stories he told of a time he spent running, avoiding the Great War and wooing many women to be somewhat endearing. It had been fanciful, to think that somewhere else in the world, that might have been possible at the time, even if it was a complete lie by an admittedly good liar.

The morning after the first night he had spent with Dotta and Botta had subsequently, and quite accidentally, become many more. A month before Dotta's death, Yuan had decided he was sick of asking the father of the pair for answers and had instead turned his attention to the youngster who appeared to enjoy watching him when he thought he wasn't looking. Knowing the old man had little time left and that his son didn't stand a chance if the Pope's henchmen came looking for a half-elf to execute to fulfil their monthly quota's, he decided to use it to his advantage and train the rebellious teenager in the ways of the sword while grilling him as much as possible for any information.

Yuan scanned the books on weapons and weapon training in front of him a little less absently for a moment until he found "THE DUTY OF THE WARRIOR". He didn't dare take it out of its place, knowing how tattered it was nowadays. As it was, he could barely make out the title on the spine through all the cracks in it. He smirked, thinking of the look on the teens face when he presented him with it. It was as though he had never seen anything like it before, despite knowing how to read and write.

Botta had, at first, treated his fake goodwill with scepticism- something Yuan would later realise was an early sign that he understood the motives he might have had behind his training him from the beginning. The book had changed everything though. Within a day, Botta had devoured it and started from the beginning again. The more Yuan trained him and discovered that while he wasn't naturally gifted with the sword and was much more suited to archery, he had a good eye for details when it came to his attackers moves. He wasn't fast, but had very quickly learned to compensate for his downfalls.

Despite at first having intended to question the youngster at any given opportunity, Yuan found himself distracted with coming up with more difficult tasks for Botta to do in their next training sessions. The day before Dotta's death, upon visiting his base of operations for his Renegades, he had found out that it was time once again to bloody their hands. Unlike most other times when he would personally do it, explaining very calmly to his victim as to why it had to be done beforehand, he had requested, or more accurately demanded, that someone else do it. The moment he had barked the order and stormed away from the base like a hormonal teenager had been a reality check for him, to realise the consequences and hurt of forming relationships with people who were not involved in the large-scale war that was happening under their noses. But he had always been a glutton for punishment. He and Kratos at least had that in common.

Returning to the small shack in the middle of the unnamed forest the next day, he discovered the old man to be in a much worse condition than the day before. He'd quickly kicked Botta out, telling him that he had a horrible bedside manner and to go and train until further notice. Dotta had agreed and told his son to leave, to which he had reluctantly agreed with what was likely a greater understanding of what was to come soon enough.

"Your bedside manner leaves little to be desired as well, sonny-boy," Dotta had joked once they were alone. Their conversation after that had been about mostly meaningless topics, until Yuan noticed the mana fading a little more.

"So now maybe can you finally tell me the truth?" he'd had the audacity to ask him on his deathbed. Dotta had shrugged it off, as expected, which had elicited a snide retort from him about how he had taught his son to be a warrior and that he should at least give him something as a symbol of his gratitude.

"You already know the truth, Yuan," had been his response. "We met long ago. I do not forget a face, especially not one who did what you did."

"Stubborn bastard," he had cursed in angel language, to which Dotta had laughed and told him not to swear, especially around his boy. That had caught him off guard long enough for him to get the final word in before his departure from their world. "You will avenge my daughter one day."

Yuan grimaced as he thought back to it. At the time, he had been furious that his friends last words had been something so cryptic. Now.. if he could dwindle Mertelle's mana enough to get a better read of the situation, he knew it would all make sense. Of course, there was no conceivable way that he would have been able to understand back then what it all meant.

"See, old man? I was right," he thought with satisfaction. Technically, they had both been right, he supposed, but he didn't like getting into technicalities in this instance. The old man had met him, but he didn't remember meeting him yet because until yesterday, he hadn't met him for the first time in the woods outside Heimdall. He refused to be thankful to Origin for allowing him to finally be enlightened though, considering it was his power and self-absorbed motives that had allowed him to traverse time and cause the confusion in the first place.

If he had known what the old man had meant by those words back then, he might have left the young Botta without a word of goodbye. Instead, he insisted to himself that it was pertinent to keep him close in case of betrayal. Botta had seen through his thinly veiled excuse though and had refused to become a Renegade under his demand. Yuan had left him in a huff and intended to go back to his proper duties, only to return a day later and find the boy gone and the shack dismantled.

Of course, he hadn't been able to leave it at that, much to his own annoyance. Searching the woods had been rather fruitless and a waste of time. Annoyed that his disciple could have been so rude as to leave without saying goodbye, he went back to the base with even more haste than before. Upon entering his room after verbally ripping the heads off of any of the Renegades that stopped him to ask unimportant questions, he found the person he'd been angry with sitting in his chair, twirling around on it with a ridiculously smug expression painted on his face.

A shouting match between them had ensued for some time after that encounter, until he'd agreed to make him the first officer of the Renegades and promised he could have revenge on the Desian who had hung his mother when she had resisted capture. In return, Botta promised his loyalty until either they would be victorious in their endeavours or his death. Unfortunately, the latter had taken him first, not even a hundred years into what may have been a very long life. It had been one of the only times in his life thus far that he had wished he weren't right in predicting what might happen.

"Uh oh..." came a voice, making him flinch. "I don't like it when you're in thought like that. It usually means I have to figure it out on my own."

He turned his head toward Sheelos, now sitting on his bed. She fell back to the wall with a yawn and a stretch. "Unless you want to continue sharing like you did last night?" she added, giving a toothy grin as she raised her brows up and down.

He looked away. He had hoped she had forgotten his half-asleep honesty and that they could avoid conversing any more about needless topics while he geared up to work out what exactly was going on with the advisor to Mertelle.

"Was it as good for you as it was for me?" Sheelos continued to tease. He rolled his eyes when she stalked up behind him and eventually stood by his side to admire the books. "Now I can really read you like a book," she said, stepping forward and reaching to that book. He stopped her in her tracks. She covered her mouth and gasped with fake surprise. "What? Now you don't want me to know anything?"

"It's not that.. necessarily," he muttered, glaring at the books. "You know far too much already."

"Well obviously this isn't a place you bring many people," she acknowledged. "Maybe with the exception of Martel. I bet having your own little bit of space made it easy to-"

"I never took anyone here," he responded before she could finish defiling Martel's name with sexual innuendos. It was only after that he realised what he had done. Knitting his brows in frustration, he trotted away from her and to his desk, knowing he needed to act naturally. "Martel had a habit of tidying things and moving them around."

Sheelos let out a loud exhale and laugh at the same time, like she had been holding her breath. "So you didn't take her here because you like things how they are?" She cackled a bit more. "Makes sense now, why you told me not to touch anything."

"And yet you still did," he said, annoyed. Still, it wasn't as though he'd expected her to listen to him.

"Sorry," she lied without any shame. "But can you blame me for being curious?"

He wasn't watching her, but he knew she was eyeing the book of his life again. "I don't read it," he decided to explain. "I did it once, to try to understand the motives of someone close to me, and wound up regretting it. The book showed me things I couldn't see right in front of me, but those things were better off hidden. Because I did what I did based on what I knew, that person wound up in a very complicated situation that could have been prevented, had I done what I had intended to do from the beginning."

There was another pause in which all they could hear was the clock ticking. He didn't dare look at her then, for fear that he'd know she had figured out who he was talking about.

"And that was?" she whispered, not even giving him a moments grace worth of ignorance. He wondered if she actually wanted the answer.

"There is no telling what Origin has really done to manipulate you and I," he replied, unwilling to elaborate any further, for her own sake. "It is entirely possible that I played right into his hands, given how things have turned out." He hated the words as they came out of his mouth.

Sheelos was by his side faster than lightning, seating herself on the corner of his desk and precariously close to one of the photo frames. It took all of his strength to not tell her to watch what she was doing and that tables were not for sitting. "That's why we've gotta do whatever the hell we can to fix our world, Cerberus."

"Obviously," he said, wondering why he felt like laughing all of a sudden. He shook off the feeling quickly. "We need Origin, but that does not mean we have to cooperate entirely with his ways of thinking."

"Just what I was thinking," the banshee agreed. "On the bright side, I at least know a bit more about our mysterious advisor now." When he faced her, she showed him a tiny black device in her hands. "Remember how Kuchinawa spied on us for Gabriel that time?"

He wasn't sure what she was talking about, but he hated hearing that name anyway. "Oh yeah, you weren't there. That makes a lot of sense since you're still alive after I first got that letter that made it seem like you were going to betray me."

Yuan reached into one of his deep pockets for a second, taking out what could have only been the letter. "The letter from me… that I didn't write."

His thoughts of earlier before Mertelle and the troop of elves had appeared and complicated everything came bubbling back to the surface at that. Still, now wasn't the time to voice them to Sheelos. If the redhead was getting at what he thought she might be, he might have answers to his questions of just earlier finally without needing to potentially ask a dangerously powerful woman if she was pregnant with his future wife.

Sheelos grinned even wider. She seemed to be enjoying keeping him on his toes, despite the fact that he had already rolled the dice and let her into a part of his life that he'd managed to keep from practically everyone in the past. He noted that she had a frustrating habit of doing that. He glared at her to just get on with it.

"Fine, fine," she dismissed, rolling her eyes. Yuan still had a feeling he hadn't heard the last of her telling him off for a letter he hadn't written though. "Well anyway, I stole the device back. I may or may not have then dropped a teeny-tiiiiiny thing on the ground in front of Origin's stone, and it may or may not be a short range listening device that the lab in Meltokio made."

All Sheelos had written on her face was "I know something you don't know". Yuan gave her his undivided attention, despite aching to tell her to stop acting so childish and to get to the point already. Luckily she continued quickly and his patience was rewarded. "I was listening in on a conversation earlier while we were trying to find our way out of the forest. I know why they need us to get Origin."

xxx

Once she had finished relaying what she had heard from Mertelle's conversation with the mysterious advisor yesterday, Sheelos had expected Yuan to say something. Instead, the Cerberus remained still in his spot, hand to his chin while his eyes narrowed. Wherever his mind was going, he wasn't telling her. Yet, anyway. She fidgeted on her spot on the desk she was sitting, hoping to irritate him enough to get his attention so that he would realise she was waiting. He didn't bite. That struck her as odd, considering she'd been certain sitting there would have been irritating him enough to begin with. Irritating him had always been the best way to get information from him, up until a certain point at least.

She didn't know what part bothered him more, but one thing that she did know was that threatening to fight Mertelle would have been a very bad idea, considering Yuan had decided to attempt to save his beloved Martel from her fate. With that said, Sheelos wondered why Mertelle still had such a vivacious figure, even pregnant. She hadn't looked fat at all. Eventually, she put it down to the idea that maybe it had something to do with the woman's magic abilities. Yuan had seemed impressed by them, after all. Now they knew why, as well. They had not only found Origin that day. They had found who was apparently a vessel for Mana as well- the other part of the magic trick that let Yuan jump around in time. Dotta, the tall, dark and rather skinny elf she had seen earlier, had apparently been Martel's father, to boot. Having never seen Martel and only having Martuan as a reference, Sheelos had to assume that she probably got her looks more from her mother than her father.

"So, what are we gonna do?" she asked him after a while of silence. Without warning, he brisked past her and to the end of the bed where he had unloaded his armour the previous night. She watched as he slowly put it on piece by piece, still obviously in thought. She went on. "Sounds like they're working on creating a certain jackass, if you ask me."

"You're right," Yuan muttered.

"So all we have to do is to not let that happen, right?" It sounded simple to her. If they didn't create Gabriel, he wouldn't kill Martel. Then it would be happily ever after. They would just have to make sure that the world didn't get screwed up during the Kharlan war and that Mithos still acquired Origin's power to be able to split the world up. He'd do it temporarily until the war died down and then he would put it back. Too bad that she knew something that sounded simple never actually was. She referred herself back to her plan to split her souls using the Angelus Project, and then to her original plan to kill Sylvarant's Chosen right at the start.

"It wouldn't be as simple as that," Yuan said, voicing her inner monologue for her. He stood abruptly, finished equipping himself, and headed to the exit of the dimensional room he had pulled her in to. "It never is."

She watched him reach a hand out to the bare wall in front of him and as the wall disintegrated at his touch. "Stay here," he instructed.

"H-hey!" she exclaimed, standing. He was gone and the wall had turned back to normal before she had a chance to follow him. She rapped her hands on the wall herself and called his name, but either he didn't hear her, or he was ignoring her. Either way, he was going to get an earful when he came back. Or maybe…

She turned back to the room and looked left to right. Immediately, her eyes fell on the book of life. If he wasn't going to take her with him, then she was just going to have to find some other kind of means to find out what he was doing on the outside. With a minor bit of hesitation, she pulled the book of life from Yuan's shelf and opened it to the last page.

"Yuan left his most trusted banshee in what he considered to be the safest place for her at the time. Only, he did not count that by doing so that fateful hour, he would also entrust the existence of the future world to her with the information she was about to discover. Nevertheless, he continued through the woods of Origin in order to-"

"No!" Sheelos wailed. "You're supposed to keep going with the information about what the banshee is doing! How am I meant to know what she found out now?"

"Well, turn around and prepare to be enlightened."

The hairs on her arms stood on end when she heard a voice behind her. She whirled around and her jaw involuntarily dropped. A woman with some much more luscious curly red locks than she currently sported stood there and winked at her. "Don't look so surprised. Did you really think that there'd only be one of you in the entire history of all the timelines when you go following him around like that? Hell, we had four of our darling Cerberus in Timeline C at one point."

Sheelos eyed her up and down. "The logical side of me wants to call you an imposter, but I don't think anybody but me could pull that outfit off."

The other Sheelos struck a pose like she was pretending to be flattered. "Of course." The atmosphere became heavy all of a sudden when she turned serious. "I don't have long here, or anywhere, probably. Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you. If you continue down this path, it will only lead to destruction. And trust me, I'm not just talking about this thing you have for Yuan." She angled her head toward the 'exit.' "You need to take this."

Sheelos stepped forward when the other Sheelos held her hand out to her. Something small dropped into hers. She pulled her hand back and stared at it. "Is this..."

"The Angelus Project," the other Sheelos said. "When the time comes, you need to give it to Gabriel Angelus. Under no circumstances can you tell Yuan."

Sheelos' mouth dropped. "W-wait. Give it to him? You've got to be kidding! Don't you know what he's done and who he is?"

The other Sheelos' looked a bit tired. "I know. But you have to trust me. Well, you have to trust the future you. You've done all of this before. Let's just say it didn't work out as well as you might have hoped."

Sheelos felt like her brain was swimming in a pool of goo. "So you mean you've seen you as well?"

"Except that," the other Sheelos amended. "Look, I'm on borrowed time here. Mana's power isn't exactly strong any more. We can't go back. You're going to be on your own, for a little while anyway. I just hope for all of our sakes this idea works." She turned her back to her and headed out of the door. "Oh, and don't forget to read the third book from the top left. Something will be there to help you... hopefully."

"W-wait!" Sheelos tried to grab her arm before she left, but quickly withdrew her hand when the wall started to close around it. The clock ticked behind her loudly as she stared at the wall, trying to come to terms with what she had seen. After shaking her head to snap out of it, she glanced down at her hand to look at the shiny blue crystal sitting in it. The thing she had so long wished to have in her possession had suddenly been dropped literally into the palm of her hand.