Azhure: Going to have exams and finish my final project. Hopefully, it goes well.
Voice: Stay tuned!
Azhure: How many times did you say that?
Voice: Dunno!
“…I had expected you to have obtained this information from something far more bizarre,” Lux commented, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “But it is still bizarre nonetheless.”
“Please, since when did things make sense after meeting the Court Wizards all those years ago?” Aqua asked rhetorically, crossing her arms.
“True,” Petra nodded. “Very true.”
“Especially after you turned red,” Ignis quipped whilst snorting.
“But somehow, an outer entity watching us and recording our history in another realm does not sound farfetched,” Luna muttered, rubbing her chin and thinking inquisitively.
“I think it is quite flattering,” Flora commented.
“Yes! It is certainly an honor to have our legends spread beyond our world!” Rai laughed in pride.
“Yeah, but it is about a pretty bad future, you know,” Ven pointed out worriedly.
“A future clearly averted thanks to our two Court Wizards here,” Glace countered, his wrinkled face nodding towards Ronald and Joshua.
For the next half an hour or so, Aqua regaled the tale Maria told through the otome game. She also gave her fellow greater spirits the rundown on the Storykeeper, justifying how the Court Wizards obtained this information. The greater spirits seemed to have accepted the otherwise nonsensical information, showing how much they trusted Aqua.
“Alright, let us recapture the events according to this Storykeeper,” Lux sighed. “My heir was supposed to be named by a member of the family you blessed after they had taken refuge in my territory.”
“And the girl was meant to enter the academy to pursue her romantic hijinks among the many boys there!” Flora added as if it was the most important detail. “I wished I had seen it myself!”
“I would rather not. I can see a disaster waiting to happen,” Lux rolled his eyes. “That said, all of those boys you mentioned were all indeed attending the academy this year.”
“They would be a tad bit younger than Maria then,” Aqua muttered, noting to herself the discrepancy. In real life, given that the Illyers found safe refuge in Kaomagi Earth right off the bat, Maria’s parents had less pressure to wait to marry and have her.
“…”
The look on the greater light spirit heir did not escape Owen. He could tell the spirit was contemplating the namer he never met. He knew meeting Maria would only delay his ascension to being Lux’s successor so it was a total loss to him. He didn’t even know what he would’ve been named as the otome game let players decide.
“Where did you obtain this information exactly, Aqua?” Lux then asked, not bothering with Aqua’s last remark. “There has to be an origin of where you have heard of our possible future as you said it yourself.”
“Oh, from Maria herself,” Aqua replied casually. That they got it from Maria herself wasn’t the more important detail and Aqua wasn’t going to regale what they had discussed in Manegia word for word so the exposition to the rest of the greater spirits was abridged. “Why do you ask?”
“I see,” Lux nodded. “Then do you know what would she have named my heir?”
“..!”
It appeared Lux did notice his heir’s turmoil as well. Everyone knew what it meant for a spirit to be named by a human, that the light spirit could have gotten one but didn’t by a twist of fate was just too sad. The greater light spirit knew he had to rectify it however he could.
“Yes, I do,” Aqua smiled. Of course, the detail of the story in the form of an otome game was omitted – it’d be a long day if she had to open that can of worms.
“What is it then?”
As Maria always gave this spirit the same name at every playthrough, Aqua answered, “His name is Lucas. Luke for short.” Much like otome Maria, or rather Marisa, the player can assign the formal name and then the nickname of the spirit.
“…Lucas, Luke,” the greater light spirit heir muttered his name. “I like it!”
“So Typhon is back,” Ignis frowned, the expression he made being very uncharacteristic of him. “He has been alive and kicking the whole time.”
“And he is starting his revenge by cursing water spirits inside Kirash for the past few years,” Lux added with a grim tone.
Simply put, Typhon was the final boss of the otome game. He was one of the most powerful dragons Aqua and others had faced during the war against the cursed dragons. The otome game wasn’t clear how he survived, only that he did and orchestrated the cursed spirit crisis otome Maria and the capture targets had to face.
“I have no excuse,” Aqua shook her head in shame. “The Kirash royal family had always valued their privacy, no matter if the circumstances were different or not.”
“It is fate,” Rai interjected. “Whether it is consequences of the great sea you erected or the overconfident prince’s pyrrhic conquest of Fichs, Typhon will still get his opportunity to sway him.”
Speaking of which, Van didn’t even reach the Fichs capital in the otome game. As Allister thought, the war with Fichs screwed Kirash more than half the territory gained from the empire to make it worth the trouble.
That’s not to mention that the newly conquered territories previously conquered by Fichs immediately started rebelling. One of the capture targets was even from one of those places. At least otome Kirash was the biggest country in Aqua’s territory.
“Quite a grubby fate it is,” Glace continued with his arms crossed. “By the time the lads’ about to graduate, the cursed dragon will become all of our problems.”
“I still shudder to think how large swaths of my land are being overrun by my spirits being cursed by that bastard,” Aqua nursed her head. “Even the cursed spirits I am seeing now are heartbreaking enough.”
“Well, at least Joshua ratted him out earlier than he liked, right?” Ven pointed out the bright side.
“Yes, we have no news of cursed spirits in our territories,” Petra nodded slowly. “That means Typhon has yet to finish his accursed talismans to easily start the corruption anywhere he wants.”
In the otome game, Typhon created these talismans in Kirash castle basement to jumpstart cursed spirits in any territory, sent by human agents he cursed under his control, of course. Such convenient plot devices allowed otome Maria and party to first encounter these befallen spirits in their second year as the dragon was testing them by giving them out to petty crooks the academy students assigned to subjugate, quality education.
“Still, how did he even manage to curse the spirits?” Luna wondered, rubbing her chin. “Even dragons cannot mess with souls.”
“Probably why it took almost a thousand years for him to have finally done it,” Lux crossed his arms. “If anyone could do it, it is probably him.”
It was overall a foreshadowing for the chaos that was about to come down the next year when such items were spread throughout Spiri Raia. Meanwhile, the revelation that a cursed dragon was responsible for all of it was hinted at all the way back in the first year of the history class about the fae’s war against those dragons.
“But we have the solution to this conundrum,” Lux continued. “Right, Aqua?”
“Indeed,” Aqua nodded, turning her back. “Come here, Alicia.”
“Right.”
Alicia, all of her, stepped forward into the center, hopping across the floating boulders acting as the bridge to the tiny island in the middle with the rest of the hot springs. If she felt nervous, she wouldn’t show it, but Owen knew her enough that she would be confident facing down all of the greater spirits.
“So, Alicia?” Ignis remarked with a grin on his face. “I can already tell you are special. Certainly a fired-up lady too if I do say so myself.”
“Hihihi! He’s funny!”
After the little scare, Voice was still outside. She insisted that much to the spirits’ dismay. Owen could sympathize, though not for the same reason.
“Ignis’ remarks aside, it is true there is something Alicia has that others do not,” Lux scrutinized the girl again. “One that allows her to nullify Typhon’s curse.”
“Ooh, now that I have seen it, I sense the same thing in my blessed cuties,” Flora remarked excitedly.
“And according to this Storykeeper, it was because of our blessings?” Luna asked confusingly.
“Yes! Maria is able to do it because of her Illyer heritage,” Aqua smiled. “Alicia’s mother is an Illyer so she can purify cursed spirits too.”
“Okay, how is that possible?” Ven inquired, raising his hand unnecessarily. “Technically, our blessings are a pretend thing everyone else thinks is real. We did not give them any tangible power boosts, right?”
“Then maybe our empty blessings were not so empty after all if our blessed were granted the power to counteract the dragon’s curse,” Rai chuckled, already accepting the information. “All of our blessed and their descendants are able to request the purifying spirit arts, correct?”
“Yes, all of them do,” Aqua nodded.
“Huh, that makes her less impressive,” Ignis quipped.
“Hey!”
“Voice, calm down,” Alicia admonished the pixie.
Of course, when otome Maria and company encountered their first cursed spirit, they fumbled around a bit before otome Luke hit the spirit with his spirit art Maria requested. Much like Alicia, having Maria requesting the spirit art was enough for the blessing to kick in and purify the spirit. It worked because spirit arts were powered by the soul connected by the requester.
“Okay, but how still?” Ven asked again. As Aqua only gave a brief summary, the other greater spirits haven’t heard why the blessing was suddenly able to lift curses.
“It is simple, really,” Aqua crossed her arms confidently. “It is the same way when we reshaped this world into Spiri Raia at the end of our crusade against the dragons.”
“..!”
“Wait, what!?”
“Ah, I see…”
“When the dragons laid their final, greatest curse, it is from our collective will that we refused to let them have the last laugh,” Aqua explained. “We were able to shed our bodies to counteract the decay that would have ravaged us, turning us into spirits.”
“Yes,” Luna nodded. “I am still left wondering how we were able to achieve such a feat.”
“But we all know how we were able to do so,” Petra added.
“Aye, by the rite of conquest we claimed the dragons’ power to curse,” Rai stated, arcs of electricity bouncing off of him. “It is at that moment the bonds we shared allowed us to fight the final curse with a ‘curse’ of our own.”
“And shape Spiri Raia as we envisioned,” Lux finished, closing his eyes. “Yes, it is starting to make sense.”
“Yes, our ‘curse’ is to nullify the dragon’s curse,” Glace spoke slowly. “It is only appropriate that we bestowed the same ‘curse’ upon our blessed.”
“But when did we do it?” Flora wondered, placing her finger on her lips. “I did not remember giving one to my cuties, right?”
“We did when we blessed our blessed,” Aqua said. “The dragons only need to say it for the curse to come forth.”
“So unconsciously, we had given very real blessings with only our word,” Luna concluded.
“With only a word of a curse, the dragon changes the world for the worse,” Lux muttered the phrase. “Of course, the dragons had always been able to alter reality and bestow curses by simply saying it.”
“Uhn?” Rin, watching the discussion unfold, perked up at the implication.
“Indeed, Rin,” Ronald confirmed, surprising the young girl. “The dragons were able to modify this world’s Fantasy Law by saying what they wanted to alter, to a certain extent.”
“Whoa!” Rin muttered aghast.
“Yep, they’re a real piece of work,” Joshua added.
“And with the seeds we planted, our chosen people turned the tide against Typhon’s curse,” Glace then said before chuckling. “Hoho, why can we not purify our spirits ourselves, then?”
“Even I do not understand the logic no matter how much I read the reason,” Aqua shook her head in confusion.
“Moving on, by the children’s third year, Typhon will unleash an invasion of cursed spirits in all of our territories,” Lux continued the topic with a frown. “How horrible was it supposed to be?”
“In your territories, not so bad,” Aqua stated before her expression darkened. “In mine… I prefer not to remember what I have seen.”
“Damn, that bad?” Ignis said in sympathy.
She was right. Even though they were still images, the otome game had quite effectively shown how dark the story got in the third year. The Kirash capital was overrun by the cursed spirits and frankly burning to the ground, figuratively since they were water spirits.
Just the single image of the capital in pandemonium by the water spirits suffering under the dragon’s curse was enough to get to Aqua even though it hadn’t happened yet and Owen didn’t like the expression she made. Even Layla and Neptune were reduced to tears with Alicia’s mother and grandfather spending a long while comforting their named spirits while also being equally distraught.
Unsurprisingly, this happened as Typhon backstabbed Van and took over the kingdom, using it as the staging ground for his invasion. It was a sour point for Maria’s father knowing his otome self didn’t even get to confront his brother before being killed just like that. Otome game-wise, it was anti-climatic as well having the protagonist not even meeting the man who set the entire plot into motion.
“I suppose it is because we have our blessed bringing the spirits cursed by Typhon’s damnable talismans back to normal,” Lux muttered before noticing. “Could it be that Typhon embedded himself in your territory because your blessed are no longer there?”
“No, even he would not have realized our blessed can undo his curse,” Aqua shook her head. “He really did approach Van at his weakest, the same happening here. My blessed family no longer in my territory is certainly a happy coincidence for him.”
“Aye, while we have all of our blessed fighting alongside us, you had to fend them off yourself,” Rai stated sadly.
The greater lightning spirit really meant it. Even Maria’s mother and aunt fought alongside her with Neptune and Layla in the otome game when the cursed spirits invaded the light kingdom. How otome Aqua had to deal with quite frankly the source of the infestation before Maria and party came to save the day was best left unsaid.
“Well, at least it would not be for long before my blessed return to their homeland and resolve the crisis,” Aqua sighed, bopping her head down as she did so. “Them and the army from Lux’s territory.”
“Ah, yes! Like our battle with them a millennia ago!” Rai bellowed out.
The penultimate finale of the game began with a liberation force from the light kingdom into the cursed-ridden Kirash. Like a reenactment of the dragon war, with Maria and the capture targets alongside their named spirits leading the charge, they break into the capital purifying every cursed spirit in their way.
Eventually, they confronted Typhon who, while a shell of his former self, transformed from a decrepit old man into his draconic form to fight them. Of course, they defeated Typhon, and Layla and Lucas got named heir in the end. The game of course has a bad ending when the player lost the battle against Typhon which was the standard villain taking over the world so no need to talk about it further.
Especially how dark it is, Owen thought. Seeing it was their former home and Maria there, the Illyers didn’t like the fate that would befall her should Typhon win, and neither did he. Seeing Alicia’s face on the messed up ending of the otome version of her cousin was unpleasant enough.
“So, what do we do with this information at present then?” Luna inquired, moving this discussion to the final part. “We know Typhon is holed up in Kirash and the tall human’s rebellion has pressured him to act sooner. We better make haste.”
“Luna, is it not obvious?” Aqua smirked, her hands on her waist. “We charge in and defeat Typhon, all of us, just as we did against the dragons when we were fae!” In the otome game, it was just the greater water and light spirit fighting Typhon. The others were still occupied with the cursed spirits in their territory.
“Strike while we have the opportunity,” Rai muttered with an increasing smile. “Hah! I like it!”
“See, everyone?” Ignis smiled, looking at the other greater spirits. “Aqua is still the undine we know and love.”
“Yes,” Luna sighed in relent, yet Owen could see a faint smile. “You are right, Ignis.”
“Hm?” Aqua blinked, naturally confused by her colleagues’ behavior. “What is wrong?”
“Aqua, I am sure you and we know how much we worried about you,” Petra stated as if a weight had been lifted. “And it appears such fears were unfounded.”
“Oh,” Aqua realized. “So it is that, huh?”
“We were scared, you know,” Flora chastised, seeing Aqua not having a greater reaction than expected. “Ever since you turned red, no, ever since meeting the Court Wizards, we thought you were changing in a bad way.”
“But as it turns out, you are just being yourself as you were a millennia ago,” Petra added with a soft smile. “We were too… distracted to remember it.”
“Definitely!” Ignis chuckled. There was no need to point out what he was referring to.
“Laugh it up,” Aqua grumbled though with a hint of amusement.
“You were always different from other undines,” Lux said. “That is to say, you do not just go against the flow, you force it to flow your way.”
“And we love you for it!” Ven added, raising his hand with a thumbs up for no reason.
“Oh really?” Aqua asked, raising her eyebrow.
“Of course,” Luna stated as if it were fact. “You were the one who banded us together to fight the dragons, after all.”
“Aqua is the one who started the war!?” Alicia muttered agape, having long since returned to the Court Wizards group.
“Wow!”
“Of course, her Guardianship makes sense when you consider such things,” Ronald remarked.
“You were the one who started blessing people and bringing us along,” Flora added. “Face it, you are the one who always comes forth new ideas and always makes us like it in the end.”
“And in regards to that, allow us to extend our apology, for doubting you,” Lux finished solemnly.
“Yes, I figured,” Aqua sighed, hanging her head low. “But, I also have to apologize for doubting you all as well.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Because I had also thought in the passing years we began to rift apart and yet I chose to pretend everything was fine,” Aqua confessed with a small smile. “I suppose my fears were unfounded too because you all still cared about me.”
“Well, I suppose we all acted nothing was wrong of the sorts,” Glace remarked.
“Aqua…” Layla muttered sadly.
“Uuh…” Neptune sobbed.
It was supposed to be an end on a good note, with Aqua and her fellow greater spirits opening up to each other before the crack between them got worse. But as always, Owen felt something bad in his chest at what they must have felt bottling up all those emotions and suspicions towards one another because it happened in the first place.
“Everyone, how did we get here?” Aqua then said. “I still remember when we were just fae, frolicking around and going on adventures like it is no one’s business.”
“Aye, I still remembered the shenanigans we got into,” Ignis remembered fondly.
“Yes, in the end, we were only playful creatures at heart,” Luna lamented, reminiscing. “Then we saw what Typhon did to that village all for his kind’s brand of amusement.”
“I still remember that poor boy ripped apart,” Petra shook her head in sorrow.
“Do not remind me of that boy,” Flora flinched in metaphorical pain. “He was too innocent to die like that.”
“Bastard even has the gall to say we would do the same if we were in their scales when we kicked them in,” Ignis grumbled, crossing his arms in annoyance.
“Yet we have shown to not share their hubris,” Rai added resolutely.
“You said it!” Ven praised.
“And we shall prove that tyrant wrong again,” Glace declared.
“Yes, I will never regret the day I proposed to defeat the cursed dragons and rid their evil from this world,” Aqua closed her eyes before opening them in determination. “And I will gladly do it again if I have to!”
“That’s right!” Layla praised, happy to see her greater spirit mood back up.
“Yeah!” Neptune joined in.
“Well said,” Lux said with enthusiasm. “So, what is the plan? Surely you have thought of it before we gathered here.”
“Of course I do,” Aqua nodded, before turning to her fellow Court Wizards. “Will, come to the center, please.”
“Right,” William sighed as he hopped to the center.
Azhure: So, what do you all think of this part? Is it good? Are there any problems with it? Any reviews or feedback is appreciated as long as they’re not plain insults meant to blow off your stress.
Voice: Don’t do that to people! Not even on the internet!
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