Chapter 13

Do you really want it? Tell me. Do you really want it?

I'm waiting for your answer.

---------- Her final tour date is over. Lynne was due back at her record company in two days to disciss her contract and her new album. Sucess is just a few short months away, the record execs assure her. While her last album sold well within certain groups, they all but guarantee mainstream sucess with her next album. Mass advertisement. TV exposure. Everything that comes to major music stars. They're even offering a multi-album deal reaching into the millions. Her dream, or at least one of her dreams, is close to coming true.

But she doesn't want it.

The trip to Khazan has exposed her to too much. First, the assurance that her brother is still alive. Then, discovering the true reason why he had disapeared all those years ago. Too many old memories joined with new revelations, old horrors and new horrors meeting and mingling. After seeing the truth, there is no way Lynne can return to the mundane life she has built for herself after the fall of Inusaka High. She can't return to her appartment, or to the recording studio, or even to the stage where she truly fells at home. She has to face evil-- the evil that tore her life apart all those years ago. She has to make peace somehow. She can't return to her new life until her old life finds closure.

Devyn and his damnation. She can't let that continue. She will at least try to make sense of his choice, find out why he is so content with giving his soul away to an oblivious force. Not only will that mean confronting Devyn again, but HIM as well. She will have to avoid HIS temptations again, attempt to not succum the way Devyn did long ago. But at the same time, Lynne can't deny the existence of those old memories the way she did in their first encounter. She can't refuse to look, she must look straight into her sorrow to conquer it.

And then there was Yushiro.

After all of these years. After the horrible memories that resurfaced during her encounter with Devyn's master, why is he returning to her thoughts now? Lynne knows that he is safe and sound here on Khazan. She simply didn't want to bother him while she was here for fear of dredging up the very memories in both of their minds that she was being forced to confront.

Lynne reaches for the phone and prepares to dial his number. Her finger presses the first number. Then the second. The third comes far more difficulty, and the fourth is torturous. The fifth never comes and Lynne hangs up the phone.

"No need to drag him along with me to Hell."

---------- The next morning, Lynne calls her manager. She tells him not to expect to see her tomorrow. Or the day after that. Or next week. Or next month.

"It seems family comes before music, man. I can't dance with success until I've truly danced with my loved ones. See ya."

---------- We live in an age where we no longer have heroes and myths. Many heroes and many myths may still exist, but they are anachronisms for a bygone age where peace was a goal we could touch and evil was nothing but a thorn in our sides. Chaos now reigns in this universe and the taint of corruption spreads at a fevored pitch. If the cycle continues, we will soon enter an era of untold disaster.

Life is not as evolutionary as one may believe. While individual species may change to fit their surroundings, Life itself is nothing but a wheel perpeptually spinning. Something must be at the bottom of that wheel at any given moment, feeling the burden and pain that keeps the wheel adrift on its course to god knows where.

But what if that cycle were to be broken? What if the wheel were to be stopped? That is what true heroes strive for in their exploits. The true legendary hero strikes at that wheel in an attempt to place the dark forces of the universe at the bottom this wheel. The hero strikes out at the malignant forces in the Universe so that their demise may become the permanent foundation for the now-stationary wheel, so that it may rest with all that is good in the world on top, never to be threatened by evil again.

The pieces are falling into place now. In these days where the true Hero is less than a dying breed, this may be the last chance to strike at the Wheel and halt its progress forever. I fear that with the next turn, the darker forces at work will make their strike and halt the Wheel in their favor.

"I do not wish for you to live in such a world, Diedre. That is why we have come to Khazan."

"And what of her?" Diedre points at the pink-haired girl as she steps out of the Amber Express. "Is she a part of this little Wheel-thingie of yours, or is she some poor sap like me that's getting dragged along."

"A little of both, dear. A little of both."

Madeleine looks towards her traveling companions with a confused expression adoring her face but saying nothing.

---------- Do I have any regrets of my own?

I would not call it a regret so much as... a dissapointment.

I delve so much into the flaws and nuances of others that sometimes I find myself forgetting my own weaknesses. Always trying to help others and I forget to help myself. You know how the old cliché goes.

I, too, found myself drawn to the island of Inusaka during those fated days before the school's fall. No, no... I was neither student not teacher. I'm far too old to really take on either roll effectively. Most women shudder at the thought of turning 40. I shuddered at the thought of turning 4000. Too old to truly learn anything new and too old to truly teach someone without wanting to impart centuries of knowledge upon someone who does not have the time to learn that much. No. I felt the strings of fate tugging towards this island and I set up shop. A flower shop in the city that existed to give the students a place to "escape" to when the drudgeries of school started to wear away. The city of Inusaka was just like the school, manufactured to act as just another piece in the Majestic's training program. My shop found little buisness save for the occassional nervous high school boy looking for a flower to give to his secret sweetheart or nervous schoolteacher buying flowers for his angry wife to make up for spending the previous night drinking at the bar down the street. It was a quiet life for myself and my daughter. We could live peacefully under the eye of our possible enemy while I carried out what I felt at the time would be my crowning achievement in my millenia of work as a self-proclaimed Hero.

Ironic as it may sound, fate did not bring me to this island to bear witness to the Majestic's fall. My purpose had a name. Her name was Raven.

Raven was one of the students at Inusaka High. A young, distressed woman who did not know her place in the world. She was struggling with herself. Literally. Within her dwells two souls. One that you could call good and one that you could call evil. The details are far more complicated, but at the time all that mattered to me were the blacks and the whites of the situation. I felt that if I could sway this young woman to favor her good soul...

She would become that Hero that would strike at the Wheel.

What better way to overcome the cycle than to fight fire with fire? Within this girl was the potential to harness the power of both sides of the coin. If one side were to become dominant, that side could tap into the other side's power and use it for its own.

At the time I relished in the irony of evil being struck down to impotence by a person who weilded evil's own power against it. I would cry myself to sleep at the sheer beauty of the situation. I truly thought that I was on the verge of winning.

You would think that 4000 years of experience would have humbled me to not believe such foolish ideals. Before I met Raven I was indeed that humble soul. But within her I saw that glimmer of hope that I had not seen in centuries. That youthful exuberance rose up in my heart and I felt like a little girl again. Those days of innocence and joy were back!

And so I began to talk with Raven. I became her friend. She became like a sister to my little Diedre. I truly thought that I had won. She was at my side. She was my daughter, and I was her mother.

Unfortunately, Raven also had a father.

Seku Grishum. The man who mirrors me in every aspect. My proverbial evil twin. An ancient warlock as old, if not older than I. A "Hero" in his own regard that wishes to strike at the Wheel and halt its progress. We merely differ on where to stop the Wheel. We stand at opposite sides of the wheel. We both strike at the side that the other is defending. My nemesis.

Seku approached Raven just as I did. He became her friend and her teacher. Unlike me, Seku still retains the spark to teach those far younger than he is. I now know that it is his zeal for his task that allows him to surpass me in those respects. While we are both freverent warriors for our chosen sides, compared to him I am but a dispassioned has-been while he is the well-aged warrior-poet who will fight with the same energy until the day he dies. But that is not why he won out in the end.

Raven's choice came not from Seku's superiority to me in any regard. Raven told me as much the day that she made her tear-filled decision.

"To you I am a savior. To him I am merely a student. To you I am a daughter. To him I am merely a friend. You expect the world of me. He expects nothing but what I can give. To you I am everything. To him I am just me. I love you like a mother, but that... isn't what I want. I want to be part of a family and not to become the family. I'm just once piece, not the whole. I hope you understand."

And understand that I do. After all, which would you prefer? If you had the choice, would you become the Hero that sacrifices everything for those around you, or would you be one of those faces in the crowd that the Hero sacrificed himself to save? Give the reward or reep the reward? I expected Raven to be as self-sacrificing as I was, and she wasn't. She was just a normal girl despite her dual-nature.

But... Raven was also given a choice.

What if the Hero was not given a choice? What if destiny foretold the Hero that he must sacrifice himself so that others may continue their lives as they see fit? Was that my mistake? Did I lose Raven because I allowed a choice to be made? If Seku were out of the picture-- if I had eliminated him during one of our encounters over the centuries-- would Raven had become that Hero because she was shown no other option?

That, I believe, is the answer. All I had to do was wait for the next soul to come along and I could direct that soul in the right direction. So I did some research and discovered a long-lost Hero that was also forced to take on that role. Few know of his true identity. Seryph Gibbons. Avatar of the Universe. Reluctant but oblidging Hero. He will understand. I just hope that my theory is true...

"So, Madeleine... where does your letter say you're supposed to go? Perhaps we can share a taxi and see you on your way."

"1435 Vanguard Avenue. Seryph Gibbons' house. I don't know who he is, but he sounds like a nice man."

"Indeed he is, Madeleine. Indeed he is."