In the begining, before Creation was, before God had made anything beyond the mere hope, the idea of existence, were we born. Two kindered spirits, brought froth from nothing to serve some twisted purpose that God had designed, born to serve nothing until nothing returns, until emptiness is all there is once more.

God made everything, and he made us. He gave us Life, he gave us form, he gave us everything...and so in the begining we were contented. We watched as life evolved from the seed that God had left behind, and we governed it by the word of God, made sure that Life occured as were His wishes. And so the first age passed.

But, of course, we could never have been allowed to be perfect. We saw that the peoples worshipped us, and we took ourselves up to the level of demi-gods, and cast aside the ways of old, the worship of God and began the worship of ourselves. And God saw. And God was angry, for He is a jealous God, and so it came to pass that he did lay a curse down upon us. A most terrible curse. We became enragted at one another, and began a war netween ourselves. The peoples who worshipped us fought as well, and they died, and God was pleased at the retribution he exacted on those who had defied him.

So the years passed, and when, finally, we perished - freedom - we found that it was little more than another snare. The priests of God came and took our bodies, and then they snatched our souls as if it were a common thing. The forged the blade...not any blade, but THE blade...and cast our souls in union into its sleek steel surface. Holy and Evil, light and dark, the two sides of one coin both held in one steel. They then cast us into the deeps of the temples' caverns, there to rust for eternity...leaving us to argue in damnation with ourselves forever.

Others found us. Despite Gods ambitions to keep us in the dark forever, we were found and brought out. Many tried to master us, and only a few suceeded without losing their minds, but even mastering us they could not bring forth the true strength of our union. Because God has a plan for us, even if we have defied him....

We beg you, I for myself and for my brother, whom lays in the depths of the evil that consumes him beyond my reach, with the second half of the Blade....I call to you, Slayer, for you shall unite us and defeat the mighty, and lay them low so that they may never rise again. And then, perhaps, we can finally go to the Otherworld and rest.

Help us....

A pattering, the sound of rain falling from the heavens, landing on damp leaves, soul, and rock; cascading down branches of trees so that nothing was dry even if the rain were only a light one come in from the distant ocean. Grey, low clouds hung in the sky, casting the world in that peculiar shade of depressing tones that few can describe, because they portray an emotion, rather than an appearnace. Somewhere distant, thunder rolls, reverberating off of the hills and the towering mountains.

The mountains...yes, towering high, dominating everything in this land. Their tops hide amid the clouds, so high as to scratch the glass of heaven, blanketed on their slopes with verdant green deciduous and pines forests, extending to the treelines where snow, ice, and cold grey stone take over, climbing steadily over the jagged, craggy peaks into the skies beyond. The mountains dwarved their valleys, the glaciers made cities seem small and trivial. Alpine lakes glistened like jewels despite the overcast, their surfaces dancing to a light breeze and the patter of rain in their high nests.

Flames danced to the dark skies, praising some ancient, archaic God that no one knew. The flames had a life, just as those the flames fed on once did.

The village burned crimson and gold, its inhabitants fleeing left and right, dashing into the snowbound woods with whatever belongings they could scrape together. The skies were dark, but reflected off of the scudding clouds as far as the eyes could see were the same orange lights. Fires burned, and took everything, gave nothing. In the night, a child screamed, and was cut brutally short by a savage roar of feral rage.

They stood like ghostly apparitions, a haunting reminder of how fragile life is, and how quickly circumstances may change from day to day, week to week....year to year. The palace lay on a spot of ground that was level enough to take a foundation - drenched in the everlasting rains of these mountains, its broken roof, crumbling walls and overgrown courtyards a testament to time.

A banner flitted in the breeze; a banner tattered and torn by the elements, so that whtever had been on its cloth surface before was now wholy unrecognizable.

Cool, pale light...filtering in from a window set in a wall, in a room as white as snow. A bed, a place of rest, the haze of fog all about the vision of such things. Trees, without the room and within the window, a door, and footsteps.

Believe....and your eyes shall be open...

Bright, painful light, like a star spreading across consious realms....

Rain, pattering on pale white flesh, beading and rolling off of warm skin to pool in the puddle beneath the body, a body that steamed gently in the cold and the rain.

She stirred slightly, silver hair tangled and matted, thick with mud and foul slime dried and remoistened by the rains. Her pale skin was daubed with flecks of damp mud. A small frame, not much beyond the years of childhood, yet somehow, a child seemed ever more far out of place from this angle.

A cave yawned dark and inviting behind her....

She tossed and turned once in her sleep, her dream filled sleep, and waited more and longer....for the other to come. Others.

Black scales glimmered in the aetherial light provided by the rock of the chamber, the off-white, blueish hue glinting menacingly in the beasts eyes. It watched her with caution, because to beasts of magic, created for one purpose, her identity could never be hidden.

She held the Blade high, its polished, razor edge radiating the concept of sharpness, its steel foretelling the strength it possessed. It shimmered unnaturaly, flipping through the spectrum as though it were an oil sheen rather than a weapon of destruction. In her hands, it was certainly that.

"Why do you come here?" It hissed at her, white teeth glinting wickedly in the light for the breif space that they were shown. The woman said nothing, keeping her place in this tomb of rock. It shrugged to itself, and then lashed out with its massive tail. Steel flashed. The beast roared the feral roar of the wounded, shaking the souls of all near at hand and not disturbing so much as a mote of dust...

The Dragon sat, clothing tattered, the veil that concealed her face ripped away to show the turquoise tatooes that adorned her face and most the rest of her body. She sat at the edge of the caverns, in Ivalice, and had so sat since the end of the fated battle between herself and the Gaurdian of the Blade. Her massive sword lay at her feet, its edges notched - an unlikely situation, given what the blade represented in her. She shuddered, and rose to her feet, finally.

"The time of reckoning approaches..." She whispered to herself, and turned from the depths of the cave, knowing she would return here again, but not now. Later, much later.

The beast reverted shape and form, as was its wont, into something that could handle the situation presneted it better. Its limbs became lithe and supple, smaller, it alltogether became a much different visage. A creature of magic, it was permitted this....and before the thought that such was impossible could cross a human mind, it stood before the Dragon as a humanoid being, devoid of light, created of darkness within darkness. In its hand it held a blade of black, its edges extending to infinite, its material side as large and menacing as the Dragons' own.

"What do they call you, shapechanger? Beast of the Ancients?" She asked it, but it said nothing. Its name was nothing, because its creators had never thought that far. Instead, in answer, it lunged forward, a great overhanded blow that intended to lay its opponent low and nothing else. Ringing steel, the sound of her parrying the first as the second reversed direction to sweep her legs off - a nimble dodge, and the sound of ancient metal carving into the stone floor as if it were flesh, unleashing a hellions' portion of sparks and fire, gouging its scar into the ground.

The Dragon backed off as the beast repositioned itself, watching ever more wearily of its opponent.

She stepped free of the cavern, into the soaking world....looked at the rain drenched terrain as if for the first time instead of yet another, and then walked onto the squelching, boggy earth. Around her, the ruins of Ivalice lay in their sad state of disrepair, the efforts of which to restore had been abandoned shortly after the dissappearance of the Reverent Divine. Now the land was once more deserted, without so much as a single occupant as opposed to the hundereds that had made this palace and the meagre village below their homes. The mountains surroundiong, once home to the Lords of the Reverent, were empty of those Lords.

She stepped into an overgrown courtyard, and looked at the ancient walls of dressed stone, worn by rains, snow, and wind. She looked to the high peaks above, but could only see the low ceiling of the clouds that encased the world, and was discontented with such. She turned, and walked up the sloped courtyard, and entered through the tumbled-down passage that led to the quarters chosen by herself and her Mistress. Once there, she settled herself against the aged walls, and closed her eyes....

And she launched herself then, a fury of blindingly fast strike and jabs, aimed at all possible points of the shadows' body, if yet unseen. The beast hissed, and parried madly, but was driven to give ground. Magic to magic, blade to blade, strength to strength, but the Dragon was superior in every way. The Gaurdian was intended to keep the average inhabitants of Maxim from the cave's secrets, not to keep the Kindred races from the depths. The beast shrieked, and raised its own magi-crafted blade to ward off the terrible might of the Dragons last overhand blow, and shrieked as its blade was shattered, its body riven in twain and left to dissipate into shreds of disused magic, before fading back to the aethers where it had come, calling do the curses of the Gods upon the Dragon.....

The gaurdian defeated, she was free to press on into the last chamber....

"And there, I found the resting place, but nothing resting. It is taken, gone.....and so is she?" She half stated, half asked, peering to the heavens to get her answers from God.

Thunder roared.

Lightning flared. Illuminated within it, however briefly, stood a figure. In one hand it held a lantern carved from a mass of obsidian. It was a suiting color in this instance, since the individual in question was shrouded in it. It was also well beyond anorexically thin, and it's clothing had been tailored to suit it's calcific frame. Bone skinny, it was, and hand-sewn silk. A minor trick of magic quietly annihilated the raindrops as they approached...water could do horrible things to good clothing, and while Jacob did find a perverse delight in going to the clothiers to have them made he preffered to make them last.

The lantern was unlit at first. He had relied on the lightning to reveal his presense, at least initially. Once he was sure to have been seen, he let the thing light itself. A low, pulseing lambence issued from the black cage, casting a deep sanguine glow across a fair space of land. From this circle of crimson, he favored the dragon, Celes, with a winning (or at least amazingly terminal) smile.

"Hello, Celes."
[center]~~~~~
No, really. I had a father.[/center]

Tap. Thip. Thip. Tap. Thip. Thip.

Silence.

And then a cacaphony of unthought proportion, exploding across all the realms audible, all realms thought.

And then, save for the sound of the occasional piece of stone clattering to to the floor amid the failing white light, silence resumes its control of this place.

Utter, horrifying silence. And then, from the darkness, comes a light chuckle.

"Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Hell, my Lord..." Came a voice in the dark, lit only by the aetherial strands and remnants of the magic that had lived and grown here. By the spectral light, the stranger appeared as a tall, menacing figure. Reasonably, anyway, dark hair shimmering in the haunted light, glinting off of crimson eyes and fang tips that extended beyond the reach of her upper lip. She stood, staff held in the air before her as she had struck something - and the rubble on the floor indicated that this might well be the case, for the rubble was of white marble, and bore fragments of writing upon each of the scattered pieces. The stave hung there, ornate, carved from ebony with a figure of a dragon made of carved and worked onyx atop. She grinned now, and stepped carefully over the remains of who knew what.

You can feel the power too, my sweet....radiating, pulsing like some dreadful living creature. I can taste it on the air....the Blade which God made, and I shall either master or unmake...

She nodded her head as she skipped over debris, walking down the darkened hallway. Passages opened off to each side...all of them she ignored in her search for that one object that the Gate of Heaven had intended to protect.

The gate was so easy. The people whom had built it, the sorcerors who had created the magic to seal it and the caverns and catacombs beyond it had never thought that any outside the family line would learn of the artifact they concealed. In fact, they had fervently hoped no one would....the lure of power, it is strong in humanity, whom constantly seeks to better itself, augmenting abilities either by magic or by equiptment.

She grinned all the more darkly, finally turning astray of the main passage down a winding set of stairs. The aetherial light persisted, even though into the depths of hell it could be likened she went, passing the tombs of kings, the burial sites of traitors. And deeper and deeper still, she went, until the stairs leveled out, and vanished into a ramp, and then into a craggy, stalagmite and stalctite adorned cavern. She moved with the silence of the living dead.

And then, she met the Gaurdian of the Blade.

The cavern grew much more light as it stood, slowly unfurling well kept wings of pure white feathers, blond hair, blue eyes, and pearly white teeth. As it stood, its eyes narrowed at the abomination that stood before it.

"Why have you come?" It asked, menace dripping from the edge of its voice. It was unfooled by hyer appearance....the scent of death wafted from her like a month old corpse in desert heat. It placed a single hand on the pommel of the massive sword sheathed at its side, as if showing its willingness to turn her back.

"Why, I've come for what is mine, Gaurdian Beast of the Blade. I suppose you wish to try and prevent that, hmm?" She said low and sweet to the angel. She smiled a smile like death, and rested her stave before her, leaning on it casually.

"Aye, that I shall." It said simply, then withdrew its own weapon....a massive, six foot blade of glistening white steel. It leveled it at her, but she did nothing.

Allow me the pleasure, my love...the servants of God I do not fear, it is actually they whom fear me. Let my fire send him to damnation...

The woman nodded her head forward, and seemed a little dissappointed at the prospect of letting the voice in her head have the pleasure of rendering the Gaurdian dead. Some deeply disturbed arousal filled her being, which she repressed despite herself. And then she took a step forward, picked the stave up, and resumed walking.

The angel attacked, an attack that would have succeeded in ending the evil were it not for the dark miasma that extended from the sorceress to ensnare its blade. The metal vanished in the darkness, dripping to the floor as molten steel, hissing as it hit the cold, damp stone floor. The angel was taken aback, but the darkness rushed and overwhelmed it. When at last it had vanished bones, still smouldering, clattered to the cavern floor, where the dissintegrated into ashes.

It is done. And now... Said the voice in her mind, as she passed to a final gate. It was warded heavily, but as she touched it, the wards collapsed, and the gate itself changed from white to black, and then to ashes, falling away to reveal what lay withing.

A sword. A complete blade, to be sure, but she knew better as she picked the weapon up.

God made me Evil, to do the bidding of the sinners, to do the bidding of the unfaithful and lay them all low.

I knew when we perished from this world that it would be a mighty hand, unyielding in the devotion to the Darkness, rather than some god, that would bring out the might imbued in me and my brother....my brother, fooled by the ways of the so-called Gods' creation. And thus, it will be my benevolent request....we must be brought together, and kept from the hands of the Faithful. In Darkness it shall serve far better than light....

Help me and my brother, and my secrets shall be yours, my strength yours, so that you may lay low those whom are powerful and seek your destruction....

The Sorceress smiled, and something unspeakable with her.

"Indeed...help you shall recieve..." She said, as the aetherial light slowly ebbed away to nothingness.

The cavern was once more dark, and silent.

And the lightning did indeed flash, giving way to crashing thunder that echoed off of the mountainsides and through the valley, as the occasions permitted.

She sat against the wall, placing her sword across her lap, listening to the sounds of water drip through the crascks in the brickwork overhead, lost in thought.

What had happened? They had come here to lead a people to truth, had stumbled across the secrets of Ivalice, this Ivalice, and then....what? They had discovered magic, altered it, destroyed it, and unleashed evil as she had only known a few times in her life. And in the first fray, she had been seperated from her Mistress, and been left to navigate the dark passages beneath the palace. Several levels of catacombs, and then the shadow thing....

The Dragon picked up her sword one more time, and looked up and down its finely polished surface. The blade glinted like an oilslick, a million different colours painted on its surface...a reflection of herself, she thought. Where did failure fit into the picture?

And then there was a warm, hopeful light in the passage leading to the Lady's quarters, and she turned her head to look at it...and around the corner came a man. A man in black. A...very thin man...and the most noticable thing was his smile. The man gave the impression of being not only dead, but somewhat....lacking in the flesh department. It was the grin. Really, the fact that bone showed all over was to be ignored simply for that grin.

"Funny, seeing you know my name before we've even been introduced. Made me worry for a second there....worried that it might be the Pale Horseman come to take me off finally." She said in a low tone, teeth glinting in the firelight. She turned slowly to look at him more directly. "You aren't, are you?" She asked in a tone that was as difficult to read as the skulls own face. She made no pretense to stand, though she did set her sword back down again.

"I usually don't get many visits from walking skeletons. So I assume there is a reason why I am seeing one now, that has allready spoken at least two words...?"

Jacob simply smiled his toothy smile, and nodded. "There is always a reason, Ms. Celes." he uttered in a creaky baritone. Walking had a voice that could easily be described as old as the dirt, cunning as a demon, and deep as the grave they'd buried him in. "Your performance against the guardian was predictably more than adequate. I presume you have discovered that what you sought is missing..."

He stepped into the firelight, the lantern's bloody glow overtaking the pleasant flicker, though it wasn't more intense. It was, however, quite a pervasive sort of light. "I bring you a gift, from certain interested third parties. For your trouble, you understand." he explained, setting the lantern down. The eldritch shimmer within it died as soon as his hand left it.

"It's good for finding things, you see. Right now I have it tuned to...well. You. But I imagine you can find other uses for it, mm?" he elaborated, smileing with his raspy, mocking voice. "It has it's limits, of course, but what doesn't these days?"
[center]~~~~~
Prophet!, said I, thing of evil!
Prophet still, if bird or devil!
~Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven[/center]

She was not, in fact, surprised that Walking knew her name. That was an easy enough thing to learn, though she didn't like the thought that a host of evil nasty bastards across the universe could pick her out on sight. That he knew she was looking for something and, more importantly, that whatever it was was missing, was surprising. She hid it away in the dark corners of her mind.

He told her that he had been sent bearing a gift from "certain interested third-parties". She had no idea who that might be, and as he set the object down, she become ever more curious. The eldritch light it cast off winked out of existence as soon as the skeletal hands lefts its surface. She stared at it in curiosity, then looked back to where its previous owner's face was at. And then he told her what it was used for.

"So....if I am to have it, how do you use it?" She asked queriously, leaning forward to touch the surface of the lantern. It did nothing at her touch, as if her touch was unconvincing.