Sadoul shouted, "All right, suit up!"
The five men stood on the rocky shore around Lucia's tower by the four surviving mecha assault suits. All save Kazyr bore weapons at their sides and their faces kept returning to gaze at the unnatural darkness to the east. Though early morning, the light to the east had drained away as though something absorbed Althena's glow.
"Are you sure you'll be okay, Kazyr?" Ghaleon asked.
The white-haired mage nodded. "The phoenix has never failed me before, and we already know I don't fly mecha very well."
"Take care then."
Kazyr nodded as his friends suited themselves in the armors Jeal's nation labored to produce. Jeal in particular moved like a man possessed. The Danek emperor had received little sleep if any at all the previous night. Once he saw the light ascend from Danek, the guilt he felt nearly overwhelmed him. Feeling no need for sleep, Lucia had glided beside him and stood vigil over Jeal until the grayness that was the dawn emerged from above.
"All right," said Ghaleon, "let's not forget why we've come this far." Ghaleon's mecha turned to face the others and Kazyr. "We've all been given another chance to make a difference, so let's not blow it."
Ghaleon's voice rose in volume as determination filled him. "Through our trials the Maker has given us the keys to defeating him. He has shown us why we must fight and why we must continue to do so! Love and mortality. They are intertwined. We fight because we care, because we want to leave behind a world content with itself for those we love. That is why we fight!"
The four mecha lifted off and Kazyr clasped his hands before him. He felt the seaborne wind catch the folds of his tabard and hair as he prayed they would all emerge unharmed. Kazyr then closed his eyes, summoning the power of his fire.
"Spirit of the phoenix, hearken to my call from beyond the stars. Accept me as your humble host and lend me your strength!"
Flame billowed out from Kazyr's torso, licking its way down his arm and legs and rising in a great stream above his head. This fire did not harm, only bearing the warmth of a lover's touch. Kazyr raised the arms of his flame wreathed form and the fire unfurled from them in the shape of massive wings. The heat gathered beneath him, lifting him slowly into the air. The proud phoenix head erupted from the peak of the flame with an avian cry and the legs and tail delicately separated themselves from the body to rest upon the ground.
Kazyr, suspended in the heart of the giant firebird, lowered his arms. The wings of the phoenix remained spread and Kazyr issued a silent thought of gratitude. In response to his will, the great bird took flight, its strength easily allowing him to catch up with the disappearing mecha.
The white-haired mage smiled wearily as the tireless wings carried him through the brisk ocean air. He sailed alongside Sadoul's mecha, catching a flash of blue eyes through the visor. Then the wings pumped, thrusting him higher, farther ahead, and allowing him to catch the warmer thermals and soar without movement.
Kazyr felt as though it had been ages since he last could so freely enjoy himself. Something about the speed, the effortless grace that could only be achieved with winged flight or on four legs made him feel alive in ways that no other man could fathom. The phoenix drained too much power to be used solely for pleasure, making the wolf Kazyr's favored form. Lucia's tower hadn't provided nearly enough room for running though, and anything faster than a loping pace hurt his feet on the hard blue stone.
The mouth of the bird opened and Kazyr sang with joy. For through the song came hope and forgiveness. The black memories rolled back from Kazyr's mind, cleansed by the fire around him. With renewed confidence and faith, Kazyr's ignescent form lead the four mecha towards the accursed isle, his light the only beacon Lucia could still see from her tower in the gathering darkness.
"May Althena's grace watch over you," she murmured, sending the hope of her wish after them.
Kazyr glided down above the muddy soil of the Maker's isle. The phoenix's talons snatched hold of the earth as it slowed, bringing itself and Kazyr to a halt in an upright position. Then it settled into a crouch, lowering Kazyr's feet to the ground as its own were reabsorbed into the body. Kazyr lifted his arms, once again taking command of the wings, and folded them across his chest. The fire flickered and vanished.
Behind him, the whine of the mecha rose as the four pilots guided their craft for a landing beside him.
"You look well for a man who has just flown four hundred miles," said Ghaleon as he climbed out of his seat. "You look even better than when you left."
Kazyr turned to look at Ghaleon, his youthful face somber. "The flight gave me time to think," he said. "I cannot dwell on Mira for the rest of my life. That is all too long to bear. I will not say that I did not commit a sin, for that memory still lives within me. But I've committed myself to this path and now I must follow it through."
Ghaleon nodded in understanding. Finding no words to console him he instead said, "It is good to see you in control of yourself again."
The five men looked inward at the small isle they had found. The shore they had landed on extended for almost hundred yards inland as a flat black mass. Closer to the water the mud turned a lighter brown. Ghaleon suspected that the plantline once came far closer to the sea. Where the shore ended and the rest of the isle began, small fernlike plants grew in rabid abundance. The leaves were dark in color and appeared moist in the distance. Larger ginkgo trees stood even further in, their large fan-shaped leaves drooping as though waterlogged.
"I'm surprised we haven't been attacked yet," said Sadoul.
Solon shook his head. "Don't press our luck. They're bound to soon enough."
"They might not want to fight the mecha," said Ghaleon, casting a glance back at his own craft. "As Jeal said earlier, the Maker might not understand them since they are a thing of our creation, not his."
"Then we should keeping using them!"
Sadoul snorted. "Right now we can't see the enemy 'cause none of them are flying. It's possible the enemy hasn't seen us yet either. I'd hate to be the one to give us away. Besides, crashing through the trees in those things is going to create a lot of racket. Let's not try drawing undue attention to ourselves."
"All right, let's get going then," said Ghaleon. The silver-haired mage drew Althena's Sword and took the lead.
Jeal did not immediately follow his companions into the forest. He hesitated, looking back to the west. He shook slightly from sorrow and anger and raised a clenched hand to his chest. Torene, Mythril, all his friends, all his people... Jeal shuddered, dropping his hand to his side.
He could find no use in anger. Anger had weakened him before, left him vulnerable to the Maker's whims. Now the price had been exacted, and it was a heavy payment for the truth. The Red Dragon would avenge them though. Jeal promised himself their mission would succeed.
He drew one of the enchanted quarrels from his new quiver and nocked it in his crossbow. Jeal turned back towards the isle's interior and marched after his companions.
"Watch out! Here they come!" Sadoul's bellow fought to rise above the war cries of the demons, humans, and beasts that had rallied to the side of the Maker. Already the first daring few made their charge. The Magician of Fire whipped the blade of his sword through the gut of a salivating chimera.
"By Althena!" Ghaleon exclaimed. "It seems like every species she created has a representative here! Are they all so easily corrupted?" An armored knight attacked him. Ghaleon parried and fended off the warrior with two easy thrusts. The former Magic Emperor sighed as he saw the waves of assailants yet ahead of them. "This is going to be murder to get through."
"It'll be murder if we don't," said Solon. He raised a hand high as the crest of the next tide reached them. The ring from the white dragon flashed and a barrier of cold energy warped into being. The foremost beasts crashed into the shield with a howl, many of them freezing to death, but still propelled forward by the pressure of their peers.
Kazyr clenched a hand. "Then we'd better get started." Kazyr shifted to his werewolf form and darted ahead. The white-haired mage dodged the first rain of blows as he dropped to a four-legged sprint. Rage rising, he uttered a low snarl and proceeded to clear a path for his friends in a flurry of fangs and fire. Kazyr's movements came fluid and swiftly. He ducked, stood, leaped, and ran, leaving no time for anything to make out his shape or initiate repercussions against him. The blue bracers around his arms flared to life and shone hotter with each target he brought down.
Jeal lifted his crossbow and pulled the trigger. The quarrel sailed over Kazyr to land in the center of a unit of advancing ogres. A light flashed through the earth from the quarrel's buried tip and the missile exploded, incinerating the ogres with the fire of Althena's Red Dragon. Jeal turned to Sadoul and Ghaleon. "Hurry up and follow after Kazyr! Solon and I will cover you and try to keep the path open!"
Ghaleon herded a band of goblins from him with a massive wall of fire. "All right, we hear you!" he shouted. Ghaleon nodded to Sadoul and barreled through the rapidly closing gap Kazyr had formed. He kept Althena's Sword drawn as a precaution, using it to bat away human opponents and maim the monstrous ones.
After Ghaleon and Sadoul had gone, Jeal fired another quarrel at the monsters behind the two. Again the explosion cleared its radius of viable creatures, also widening the path for the moment. Jeal caught Solon's eyes and jerked his head towards their friends. The Magician of Water wasted no time joining Jeal in following the others.
The five men battled through the throng. The beige color above them that passed for midday brought them to the base of an ocher ziggurat. Rows of spear-wielding humanoids lined each level of the ziggurat, facing downward at the five with weapons ready.
"Wanna bet the beacon's in there?" Sadoul smirked as he decapitated a feral beastman.
Kazyr growled a low response in agreement. Now slowed to the point where he had to wait for Ghaleon and Sadoul to catch up with him, the white werewolf was annoyed by the amount of corpses that had begun to pile up around him. Still, the enemies kept coming.
Ghaleon slammed one rank of men back into another with a well placed wind spell. He turned to look up at the ziggurat and a light shimmered off the rim of his circlet. Suddenly, for a moment, he was not in the heat of battle, he was not surrounded by sweating, screaming entities wishing only for the apocalypse. He found himself floating within a stone chamber. He panicked for a moment and glanced back behind him.
An open archway stood there, revealing a set of steps downward, and a great battle raging below. Ghaleon focused himself, realizing his surroundings, and looked back towards the center of the chamber. A large multi-faceted crystal hovered above an ornate slab of silver. Within thinking he knew it had twenty faces, and this crystal was the beacon.
His mind hurt, and he blinked forcefully to clear his thoughts. He opened his eyes just in time to parry the axe of minotaur.
"Gotta stay more alert, Ghaleon," shouted Sadoul.
A quarrel soared overheard, pitching defenders off of the ziggurat with its massive conflagration.
Ghaleon shook his head. "No, Sadoul, I saw it! I saw the beacon. For a moment my mind was in the ziggurat!"
Sadoul looked at his friend with genuine concern. "Are you certain?" His voice was serious as the cheer left his face.
"Yes! The beacon's a twenty-sided crystal in there!"
"Then we've got to hurry up and break it!" Kazyr snarled.
A mammoth shadow swung into the skies above the battle, bathing nearly everyone below in its darkness. The Maker's followers quailed beneath the shadow's owner, but their eyes darted fervently between it and the five men they fought. Though tinged with fear, their looks promised a fate Ghaleon and the others didn't care to experience.
"Oh shit." Sadoul couldn't manage anything else as the great golden dragon glided in for a landing before the ziggurat. The smaller creatures scrambled to get out of the way. Some succeeded, some felt the massive tonnage of the beast crush the breath from their lungs.
The dragon bugled a clarion call of challenge and lowered its red-tinged eyes to regard those who would challenge it.
"I can't believe the size of that thing!" said Ghaleon, backing up a set. "It's almost as big as a Dragon of Althena!"
"You'd better believe it." Jeal appeared through a throng of flash frozen lizards with Solon at his side. The Danek emperor spoke again. "I had hoped that the Maker hadn't corrupted any other Segazzi. Apparently he had."
The dragon inhaled deeply, but Solon raised the magic of the white dragon to from a protective shield before the deadly flames could even leave its mouth.
"I do not expect this one to give up as I had," said Jeal, eying the dragon. "He is too far gone. The Maker has changed his body, making him stronger, larger, than any of Garnet's descendants, and his mind has been subverted." He drew the Red Dragon's Crest from the pouch at his waist. Jeal slung back his crossbow and held the Crest before him with both hands. "I'll take care of this. The rest of you get around that dragon and get ready to move when he does!"
The party split, Ghaleon and Sadoul to the dragon's right, and Solon and Kazyr to its left. Sadoul uttered the words to his mega blast spell and arced the lightning into the dragon's knee. The joint trembled beneath the blow and gave way, distracting the dragon as it crashed on to its haunches.
"That ought to give Jeal some time," Sadoul murmured to himself as he dodged a blow from a morning star.
Jeal closed his eyes, oblivious to his friends' efforts to protect him. He sensed the barrier of cold around him and the dragon in him feared the chill. He reminded himself that the barrier existed to protect him, nothing more. His grip around the Red Dragon's Crest tightened and a crimson aura spread from the Crest to surround his body.
Solon called out an incantation and frozen guards rained down from the steps of the ziggurat. "We'll have almost a clean run up once the dragon's out of the way," he told Kazyr.
The werewolf nodded, dispatching a leather clad lizardman with a swift kick to the throat. "I think we're finally wearing them down."
The golden dragon roared, staggering back and crushing the first level of stairs behind it. Its head snaked back to take aim and fire erupted from its maw. But its new opponent bore the flames without a trace of harm. Jeal, as the Red Dragon of Althena, clamped his jaws around the smaller dragon's shoulder and bodily hurled it away from the ziggurat. His tail crashed against the side of the structure, knocking off the remaining defenders as he balanced himself.
Jeal twisted his serpentine neck back to look at his friends. "Go!" he roared. The red furred dragon bounded after his target.
"Scream," said Sadoul to Ghaleon, "it gives you adrenalin." The Magician of Fire let out a shout and bellowed almost continuously as he charged up the smashed steps before the Maker's followers could recover them.
Ghaleon shook his head with amusement as Sadoul bounded up the ziggurat with the agility of a mountain goat. The former Magic Emperor sheathed his sword, lifted a hand to blow away a gargoyle that got a little too close, and chased after Sadoul.
Solon arrived at the steps just after Ghaleon. The Magician of Water grimaced as he worked to get stable footing beneath his feet. He marveled dourly at how easily Sadoul had managed.
Kazyr, seeing Solon's delay, resolved to use a faster way up. He fused his thoughts together into a single focus. "Spirit of the phoenix, hearken to my call from beyond the stars." He crossed his arms before his chest. "Accept me as your humble host and lend me your strength!" Fire flowed from his chest to surround his body. He relaxed his arms and allowed the formless enchanted flame to propel him into flight.
One by one the four wizards reached the top, Sadoul and Kazyr arrived in the lead. Once Ghaleon made it, the three entered the chamber at the top together. Kazyr warily kept the phoenix fire burning around him.
"There's the crystal." Ghaleon pointed to the clear orb hovering over the silver plate.
"Great, let's break it!" A ball of fire coalesced before Sadoul and he hurled it at the crystal. A shimmering barrier winked into existence, dissipating the fireball on contact. The barrier vanished as suddenly as it appeared.
"Apparently it's not all that easy," said Ghaleon as Solon came panting into the room. Ghaleon looked at the Magician of Water to impart some of his understanding. "The crystal's shielded."
"Then what are we going to do?" asked Solon.
Kazyr walked up to the crystal. He passed through the area where the barrier had been and looked thoughtfully at the beacon. "It doesn't seem to mind anyone getting close to it."
The draconic roaring outside increased in volume and the ground shook violently.
"They're gonna tear each other a new lung," Sadoul muttered beneath his breath.
Kazyr chuckled. "And how does that work, Sadoul?"
Ghaleon ignored Sadoul's rejoinder. He came beside the crystal and cautiously raised his sword. Nothing happened. Drawing his lips into a grim line, Ghaleon swung his blade at the crystal.
A light emerged from the beacon. Spherical in shape it shimmered as it enlarged, flinging both Ghaleon and Kazyr away away from it until it disappeared at the distance where Sadoul's fire had hit.
Kazyr groaned. The fire around him dimmed until it was barely an outline. "I guess it doesn't want anything near it when it might get hurt."
"Sorry about that," Ghaleon mumbled, rubbing his head.
"Great." Sadoul folded his arms in front of his chest. "So how do we get rid of it when we can't threaten it? Jeal and golden boy out there aren't going to be fighting forever."
"They seem to be keeping the rest of the people and monsters away from the steps too," said Solon from the archway. "Once the fight is over and they don't need to risk getting squashed those guys will be coming after us."
Kazyr stood up, brushing himself off. "I'll get the beacon then." The fire around him intensified.
"How?" Ghaleon asked as Kazyr stood beside the crystal once more.
"You remember what you told us this morning, right? About how the Maker has given us the keys to his defeat?" The werewolf reached a flame-wreathed hand towards the beacon. "We can't beat this thing by hating it, by attacking it. None of the Maker's challenges could ever be beaten that way."
"So we've got to love it, die for it?" Sadoul wore an incredulous look on his face.
Kazyr chuckled. "No," --his hand touched the crystal, but no force flung him back-- "by not directing any harm at it whatsoever." He reached out his other hand and grasped the beacon in them both before pulling it towards him. It came readily and Kazyr held it close to him like a child would a ball. "See? My magic is aimed at myself, not at it, although it is certainly being affected. It doesn't sense any hostile intentions from me so it's not reacting."
Ghaleon shook his head. "That fire you've got is going to take far too long to melt it though."
Kazyr nodded. "I know." He looked at each of them in turn. "That's why each of you are going to leave the ziggurat until this is over with." Kazyr noticed their confused expressions and shook his head to silence any protest. "I know what I'm doing. I'll increase the heat around me, but it'll fry you guys too if you're too close."
"You won't fry me," said Sadoul. "I'll help you."
Ghaleon and Solon headed outside as Sadoul came to stand across from Kazyr. The werewolf lifted the beacon and removed his hands to about an inch away from its surface. The crystal remained floating. Sadoul concentrated and a flame similar to Kazyr's rose around him.
"Move your hands near mine," said Kazyr, voice dropping to just above a whisper. "Now together, we've got to increase the heat at the same time. With the two of us the temperature can be spread more evenly. Don't lash out at the beacon. Remember, you are the target. You want yourself to become hotter, you want yourself to become as hot as a volcano, as hot as a sun..."
When Ghaleon and Solon reached the bottom of the ziggurat, the chamber at its peak exploded, sending chunks of rock and metal hurtling down on those below.