4.

Fiery times

"Yes! Finally I've found it again!" Yang proclaimed and pressed the tile on the wall. The secret door into the next corridor slid open with a loud grind.

"Though it's still dark..." Edge muttered. "Cecil and Jonas were more lucky. One of them was probably able to cast light..."

"I hope that we'll find them soon. I'm presuming that Cecil and our young wizard friend are not too happy to be on their own together," Yang said while he and Edge felt the walls all over, trying to find their way. "Jonas said to follow the corridor to the left..."

"He must have meant this one..." the ninja said, "follow my voice, Yang..."

The two men stumbled slowly along the narrow path. "Ouch... I tripped over something..." Edge cursed. "It's so pitch-black; I cannot see where I'm stepping. That's enough! Stay behind me, Yang! I'm gonna senda flame spell into the corridor in front of me. This will light the surroundings at least for some seconds!"

Yang sounded rather doubtful. "Edge.. I'm not so sure if this is a good idea--"

"FLAME!" Edge shouted, his right arm stretched inthe direction of the floor. Towering flames filled the corridor in front of them for a moment and both men had to trace their steps backwards to escape the heat. In the midst of the burning flames a loud shriek mingled.

"And? What did you see?" Yang asked.

"Err... Eyes?" Edge blinked nervously.

Something black fell to the floor with a loud thump.

"What was that?" Edge stepped forward, nudgingthe thing with his foot. "A...dead bat?"

Suddenly both men felt as if they were beingwatched.

"Edge... Did you hear that shriek? I think..."

"Yes, we must have stumbled right into a nest of--"

Pandemonium broke out as at least 50 bats left their sleeping place under the ceiling and raced through the corridor, only missing the heads of Edge and Yang by inches.

"The commotion of my spell must have woken them up!" Edge shouted and did just the right thing: he started to run -- as well did Yang.

"Does this stupid corridor never end?!" the ninja cursed. It would only be a matter of time until the bats would figure out where their prey had run off to.

"To your left..." a friendly voice whispered suddenly into Edge's ear.

Without thinking, Edge obeyed and realized that there was no wall to his left, only a little alcove. "Yang!" he shouted, "there's another hallway somewhere on the left wall! Hurry!"

Breathless and panting he leaned against the wall and was soon followed by Yang. With loud and terrible shrieking, the bats still flew in the corridor, but none got lost in the passageway the two men were standing in, as if they were being protected by a magical spell.

"Seems we're safe for the moment," Yang panted. "What luck that you found this gap in the wall..."

"Didn't you hear the voice?" Edge asked him.

"What voice?" Yang gave him a puzzled look.

"There was a voice helping me--it was right next to me...though..." Edge tried to spot theowner of the voice within the darkness about them. "Though there's no one here..."

"I'm a bit down the corridor..." a female voice suddenly said again next to his ear,sounding very friendly and soothing.

"There! Just now again! Didn't you hear anything?"

"No..." Yang gasped for breath. "I need to take a little rest... Seems I'm getting old... Don't wander off alone in this darkness, Edge."

"Okay..." Edge said, though had already begun to follow the hallway. "I only want to take a peek around the next corner. Hmm... there is just another passage..."

"You're nearly there..." the friendly voice said to him again. At the far end of the corridor, light seemed to shimmer. Edge looked back, rather warily, and could just roughly make out Yang's shape. "I'm just gonna take a look..." he murmured, not able to withstand his curiosity. He followed the direction of the shimmer slowly, only to find himself in a torch lit room similar to the main one of the temple, but much smaller. Edge turned around, but could see no one. "Hello? Are you still there?" he shouted nervously--it looked as if some shadow in the corner of the room had just moved.

"I'm right here!" a female voice laughed and silky arms suddenly encircled his shoulders from behind. Two slender white hands came into view and Edge could feel the tickle of soft hair against his neck, giving him goose pimples.

"Umm..." Edge's gaze followed the arms slowly sideways and then upwards, not daring to move for some reason. Finally, his vision beheldone of the most beautiful women he had ever seen: deep green eyes, full, red lips and elegant features surrounded by silky, rich, burgundy red hair.

In fact, she was the most beautiful women he had ever seen and there was nothing unnatural around her… Except for the fact that she was not standing on the ground, but was hanging from the ceiling in some kind of strange cocoon…

"How nice of you to visit me!" The woman smiled seductively, her red lips exposing perfect, white teeth, though it occurred to Edge that her eye-teeth were rather long...

"Sorry -- I must be going, now!" the ninja laughed nervously, squirming quickly out of her grip. He did not come far, though, for the arms of the unknown beauty were laid around him again, this time gripping himtighter. "But we didn't even come to know one another properly..." the woman said in a honeyed voice.

"And we don't want to!" Edge snapped, trying to get one arm free in orderto get hold of his sword. "Yang!" he shouted. "Can you hear me? I could use your help here! Really!!!"

"So there's another one here? Fine! Means someone for my pantry as well!" the woman laughed, exposed her sharp teeth and prepared for a "healthy" bite into Edge's neck.

"Wahh!" The ninja turned around just in time to give her a full blow with his head; both heads banged together and for a moment the world went black before Edge's eyes. The vampire woman uttered a cry of pain and loosened her grip, giving him enough time to dash away from her.

"Don't think that you can get away that easily!" the woman shouted, one hand at her hurting forehead, the other one outstretched in Edge's direction. "DRAIN!"

The ninja felt a magical force sucking at his strength, and his legs suddenly felt very heavy. As he turned his head around he saw, much tohis horror, that the Vampire lady was still on her feet, or rather, on her cocoon and was catching up with him. But it was no use. He could not run any farther and had to pause for a moment in order to catch his breath.

"Good boy!" She cried, "I don't like the taste of too excited prey!"

"See, I'm not a good choice!" Edge pantedin a fit of desperation.

To his surprise, the Vampire Lady stopped suddenly and seemed to reflect. "You have a point there." She flashed him another rapturous smile. "But I guess after one hundred years without any human blood at all, I can't be too picky," she purred and opened her arms for one final embrace.

"Edge! Down!" A voice shouted. The ninja obeyed at once, having problems keepingto his feet anyway. Yang used this chance to break free some loose stone tile from the wall and through them over Edge's head, hitting the surprised vampire in the face.

"Ouch!” The creature screamed, her upper body swaying back and forth in the air.

"I have to act while she is defenceless..." Edge murmured, the drain spell was obviously wearing off and he decided to try a magic spell. "This did work against your little bat friends as well!" he shouted und unleashed the magic, rolling backwards to avoid the fire. "FLAME!"

"ACK!" The Vampire Lady screamed horribly as her hair caught fire. Cursing and trying to extinguish the flames with her bare hands, she rushed away in panic, disappearing into some dark corridor.

"Edge! Are you all right?" Yang asked, joining his friend.

"Yes...yes I think so..." the ninja panted, still too exhausted to make jokes about the situation. Not for long, though. "Yeah...my luck with the ladies!" He suddenly grinned broadly, looking up at Yang.

"Let's try to get away from here as fast as possible. Who knows when your lady friend might return... I'm worried also for Cecil and Jonas... We don't know what else occupies these old ruins..." The karate master gave Edge a warning glance.

"We can get some torches in the room at the end of this corridor... There are also stairs leading down--how about trying our luck? It can't be any moreworse than the creatures on the way we came from..." Edge proposed.

"You're right. Let's go." Yang nodded, helping Edge, who was still a bit weak, onto his feet. "Maybe we'll find Cecil and Jonas that way..."

~*~

Cecil opened his eyes, feeling a terrible pain in his head. "Well at least nothing seems to be broken..." He sat up slowly, rubbing the back of his head and looking up. There, several feet up, he could see a hole. Slowly he remembered that he and Jonas had fallen through the floor. During the plunge he had tried to get hold of Jonas to easehis fall, but then everything had gone black...

He was aware that someone was lying next to him -- it was indeedthe young wizard. Cecil moved closer to him and examined the boy: Jonas was still breathing, but unconscious. From the boy's forehead, blood was trickling down from a big scratch. Cecil leanedhim against a stone and then closed his eyes in concentration. "Cure!" A sparkling yellow light formed slowly in his hands. He carefully touched Jonas' forehead to stop the bleeding, at least a bit.

In that moment, the wizard slowly opened his eyes, mumbling something.

"Don't worry…" Cecil said. "We have crashed through the floor, but luckily our fall was not that high... You have a nasty scratch there, though, and I'm just trying to heal--"

He did not get any further, for with a sudden amount of strength, Jonas cried out: "FIRE!" The spell slapped away the hand of the Paladin with a soaring flame, sending him backwards.

"Don't touch me with your unholy magic!" the wizard yelled. He had jumped to his feet and though he was swaying, he looked ready to cast another spell at once if his strength would just allow it.

"Jonas..." Cecil looked at him, his features full of shock. Suddenly he got aware of a burning pain in his left wrist. He winced, as he looked down, seeing that a good part of his arm was blistered and considerably burnt. Clenching his teeth and trying to lock away the pain, he scrambled back to his feet and approached the angry boy. "I just wanted to help you with my white magic!" he exclaimed, a slight tone of anger in his voice.

"I can heal myself! My sister taught me how!" Jonas snapped and started to mumble a cure spell, which fizzled. It was clear for Cecil that the young man was not trained in white magic -- besides he looked so weak that it was a wonder he was still able to stand. Cecil noticed with worry that the wound on the boy's forehead was still bleeding.

"You're a black mage, Jonas... Your abilities in white magic are not strong enough... Besides your wound's weakening you... It's still bleeding. So let me help you!" Cecil tried to convince him.

"No." The boy stated stubbornly. He tried to back away even more from the Paladin, like a wounded deer trying to outback the hunter, but was stopped by a wall. "Just because you saved my life back then doesn't mean that I'm liking or trusting you now. You're still a murderer..." he said with a quivering voice, wincing in pain as he carefully reached out for the wound on his head.

"Fine. Call me a murderer, call me everything you want... However, I'm not letting someone I've just saved some minutes ago, die. So I'm going totake a look at this wound now!" Cecil snapped, quickly grabbing the collar of Jonas with his one hand and pressing him onto the wall, carefully, but strongly, while starting his cure spell again. Jonas gasped and tried to push away the Paladin, but to no avail -- Cecil was too strong for him.

"So once again, you decide to use force where your poor diplomatic abilities fail," Jonas hissed, his eyes sparkling with hate and hurt pride. "Reminds me of our first meeting in Baron... Do you like hurting people that much?"

"How often do I have to tell this?" Cecil said as patiently as he could, "I do not like hurting people at all... Not even when I was a Dark Knight. I was just following orders... This does not excuse anything, though. Maybe I'll just have to accept that you will never trust me or stop hating me--It could be something I deserve... But I will not accept that you die here..." He paused for a moment to concentrate on the healing spell once more. The light in his hand grewstronger. "That's a pretty deep wound you have there... What do you prefer more: accepting my help, or possibly bleeding to death here in the presence of the man you hate most, knowing that he will survive?"

Jonas bit his lip. "All right...you have a point here," he grumbled. "I'll hold still, but only because I want to stay alive. Besides, I certainly don't want you of all people being the last person I'llhave to see before I die…"

Cecil nodded and let go of him without breaking his spell, as Jonas' wound was closing only slowly. On top of that, it was getting more and more hard for the Paladin to maintain the spell: Though his powers had become stronger in time, he was still not a full-fledged white wizard like Rosa and the pain of his left arm did not make it easier to concentrate.

Jonas watched Cecil's grim efforts of healing attentively. "Not that I care..." he said after a while, "but your left wrist does not look too good. Did I…?"

Cecil looked only briefly at his hand. "Oh that... That's from the spell you cast at me..." he said, trying to sound as if he did not care.

Jonas frowned. "Maybe...it was a bit rash of me to do that... But I did just open my eyes, and the first thing I saw was..."

"I know. Me casting a spell. That must have been a terrible sight to behold..." Cecil shot him a glance, which was a mixture of reproach but also slight amusement. He was too grateful that the boy held still and allowed him to close his wound, to be angry right now.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Jonas watched him with big eyes for a moment and then actually grinned slightly, though only a second later the boy's expression was as stubborn as before. "He'll never open up, no matter what I do..."

"All right. That's as much as I can do right now... The bleeding seems to have stopped. Still, we should rest for a while,” he said, drawing back his hands.

Jonas only murmured some insult and leaned back on the wall, while Cecil stood up to explore their surroundings. The room had a low ceiling and like the rooms before, most of the stone tiles had pictures of crystals upon them. A torch was lit a little ways down from the room. Cecil suddenly shivered slightly. The feeling of some kind of power, though as well as familiarity, was even stronger in this room and it seemed to come from down the passage. "Who knows what will await us there..."

Cecil did not know why, maybe Jonas had misinterpreted his shivering, but suddenly the boy addressed him onceagain. "The girl whose mother you killed… Rydia was her name, was it?"

Surprised, Cecil went to Jonas and sat down on a stone next to him. "Yes... Rydia... What about her?" he asked, secretly fearing that this discussion might turn out bad, again.

However, Jonas showed no sign of evident hostility, and continued rather hesitating, as if being afraid of something. "Did she try to protect her mother?"

"I don't know what exactly happened when Rydia's mother died. When we found the girl, her mother was already dead. However, Rydia fought to her hardest against us, though she still was a little kid. Nevertheless she still couldn't save her mother for the moment we had killed her summoned monster, a Mist dragon, her fate was sealed as well. There was no chance for her..." Cecil said gravely, once again feeling how his memories of this night seemed to pull him into dark and dull chasms of guilt and despair.

"I see... So she had no fault in the death of her mother..." Jonas said in a low voice.

"No, of course not..." Cecil said surprised. Jonas’ unusual behavior had pulled him of his own brooding. "There was nothing she could have done, as well as you had no chance to help your sis--" Cecil stopped abruptly with horror, seeing a sudden change in Jonas' face. The eyes of the boy were filled with hate again and his whole body seemed to be shivering with suppressed rage.

"Shut your mouth! What do you know of me?!" He screamed, his hands clenched into fists. Cecil backed away a bit, not knowing with what comment he had deserved such a sudden change inJonas' behavior.

"Jonas, calm yourself. I--"

The young wizard only shook his head, tears forming in his eyes. "Have you ever wondered why Lina, being just an apprentice White Wizard, had to do something as dangerous as Watch duty? I said that she volunteered, but that was a lie..." In a lower tone, he continued, "Originally, I was supposed to guard the crystal that day... I wanted to go to town with some friends, so I skipped not only my classes, but also begged Lina to take my duty. I asked her to take my place, even though I knew that White wizards of her rank weren't allowed to do the job! Nothing had ever happened before. I mean, who'd have thought that someone would want to steal this damn crystal! And she said yes without hesitation... She always was that way, kind and caring, helping anyone as best as she could..." Jonas started to sob slightly.

"It should have been me there... Maybe I would have been able to accomplish something by using my black magic, but she had no chance..." the boy looked up, his eyes veiled with tears, though they seemed to burn with a terrible fire as well. "Don't you understand? It is my fault that she died! I failed to protect her--no, even worse, I endangered her by my own actions, by my own choice... You and your men did only what you were ordered to do," he laughed bitterly between his tears, "isn't that ironical? The men who killed my sister might evenbeless responsible for her death than her own brother..."

"That's why he hates me so much... He couldn't bear the own guilt he was feeling and laid the blame on others...It must be so hard for him...” Cecil thought sorrowfully, and knelt down next to the boy. "Jonas... I know how failing to protect a loved one and endangering a person unwillingly feels. It happened to a very dear person to me as well... You spoke of her already. It was my wife, Rosa..."

Jonas showed no reaction and just sobbed slightly, obviously waiting for Cecil to continue. "A friend once told me that fault may be something which varies from perspectives to perspective. All the more my wife told me that the happenings had not been my fault, the more I could not believe it. It's the same with you... No logical reasons in the world telling you that you were not at fault foryour sister's death will be able to convince you. They will not be able to take away the burden you carry, as you laid this burden on you, yourself…" Jonas looked up, his lips quivering, his look not full of hate anymore, but enquiring, nearly afraid.

"But there's one thing that can be done and I beseech you to let me do it..." Cecil laid a friendly hand on Jonas’ shoulder and looked him right in the eyes, seriously. "Let me carry a part of this personal guilt of yours. Though I've already got a lot to carry including the death of your sister, I'm willing to try..." it was nearly a plea, though a plea which was spoken out in a way that allowed no objection.

Jonas just stared at him, his eyes big and afraid. He sobbed one more time and then wiped away his tears. "I think we have rested enough... We should get moving," he said, his voice still hoarse and raspy. He stood up slowly, Cecil's hand gliding gently from his shoulder.

The Paladin looked up to him, surprised by his sudden wish to depart. "Don't you want to give me an answer?"

Jonas tried to avoid his gaze at first, but then biting his lip, looked down at him. "Maybe you want to do something about your burnt arm before we leave... Might be bad if you need to use your sword with both hands," he said. It sounded not especially friendly, but also not cold. Then, Jonas quickly turned his back to Cecil and walked towards the exit of the room. The white haired Paladin stood up slowly and followed him, while ripping off a piece of his cloak and wrapping it around his wrist rather carelessly and with a sigh.

Though Jonas had calmed down a bit, things still had not turned out exactly as Cecil had wished for. "I can worry about this, later..." As he entered the passage, he felt the strange presence of someone, even more than before. "I don't like that at all..." he said under his breath.

"What's that?" Jonas stood still abruptly and pointed towards some stairs upwards in the distance. "Someone's coming... I heard voices..."

In fact, joking voices were echoing from the staircase: "I hope that you learned your lesson, Edge... Don't ever wander off alone again! There are lots of less risky opportunities to have a date…"

"But she was very pretty... Even though red-haired women are not really my type…"

"That sounds like Yang and Edge!" Cecil exclaimed and approached the bottom of the stairs to greet his friends.

"Cecil! Jonas! So you're still part of the living as well! This shrine turned out to be trickier than we thought..." Edge grinned.

"Yes... we, or rather Edge, had an interesting meeting with one of the local inhabitants..." Yang smiled, however, upon a closer look at the others, hesuddenly looked rather worried. "Is everything all right with you two? Jonas seems to have a nasty scratch there and your left arm looks burnt."

"What? Oh, yeah..." Cecil murmured. He did not want to worry his friends by telling them of the unfortunate happenings between Jonas and him. “We broke through the floor and got hurt… But let's save the details for later. It looks like the Crystal room is not that far from here. Let's go," he said, with a pleading look into Jonas' direction. For once, the boy seemed to understand and lead the way without protest.

"Cecil burnt his hand by falling down? How did he do that? Did he fall into a torch or what?" Edge frowned. "He never stops surprising me..." He and Yang looked at each other and shrugged, then followed the others.