The Ache to Conclude

[Zex]

"oh hi hope. lets see, calithin is dead, and you self destructed which blew up helsinki. i am not surprised you don't remember that."

i look up at leon. (since i am short)
"thanks, leon."

[Faust]

As Leon:

Oh, heh, no biggie! Just come to me if ya ever have any technological problems.

[Hope98]

"Helsinki is gone and Calithin is dead?"

I back away from Leon and Zex.
"I have to go."


I teleport to an isolated spot in a forest to think.

[Zex]

"okay leon, see you later. i am going out to look for hope." i walk away from leon and start searching.

[Lady Violet]

I wake up and go to my office. When I arrive, I see a flood of reports. Zwei was finally defeated, but now we must deal with the aftermath.

I make calls to the Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Peace, Ministry of Information and Ministry of Economics.

I send them a message that their repsective ministers should report to my office so we can discuss the massive reconstruction effort.

[Kaieka]

I wake up, feeling groggy and unpleasant. Kaschei is nowhere to be seen. I have been laying on the floor, which does no good for my body, which now meels stiff and sore. Standing to my feet, I stretch and look around the room. I had such a bizzare dream last night. I dreamt that Kaschei was playing Tuba Ruba. Strange.

I am sick of being in the past, even that cat might not have been as bad as this. Well... no, that is probably not true. But still, I don't like standing around with nothing to do.

Perusing the books on Kaschei's shelves, I take one down that has a thick red cover. The leather of it is soft and the letters are crisp and golden. I open the book. Kaschei had warned me against reading his spell books, but he probably just did that to scare me off. This one is written partly in a language that I can understand, the other looks to be some sort of... well, something that I cannot understand. But I can sound it out...

El- iam-- Tehn Raj-itan- perin-ti....

I sound out the syllables. A lovely sketch of a rose climbs up the side of the page. I finish the spell, waiting for something to happen. Nothing happens.

I must have pronounced it incorrectly. I close the book and throw it down on the desk. Well, that was worthwhile.


When the darkness envelops my senses, I am taken utterly by surprize. The feeling, however, does not last long, as my body soon collapses on the floor, my mind trapped in a dark, inpenetrable place where thoughts seem like reality, and all reality seems evil and distorted.

I am flanked by dark shapes, hounded and tortured. They whisper their secret desires in my ears and I shudder at what they propose. It is raining broken things here, and I feel colder and more alone than I have ever felt, despite the things that cling to me and run dark fingers over my arms and hands. They know my greatest fears here. They know my deepest needs. They know all of the pain that I have ever felt, they draw it from me like blood in a syringe. They feed it back to me. They force me to drink of my own suffering, and helpless to resist, I oblige.

Were I human, my body would be pale and cold. But my body is always pale and cold, so I lay on the floor unchanged, but unmoving. Trapped in a dream world of my own conjuring... a lasting spell, to be sure.

[Hikari]

I drop on my knees and lift him into my arms, teleporting away to my house.

I set him on my bed and go to the kitchen to get him a glass of water. Placing the cup of water on the night table, I sit on the edge of the bed next to him and sigh; watching him rest.

"Maybe I didn't heal you well enough... Or perhaps I should transfer my energy to you..." I mumble to myself, laying my hand on his forehead; feeding off my energy.

[Ixyanarosir]

I walk into Kaschei's office to see if the sorcerer has anything else for me to do.

[Kaschei]

Kaschei returns to his office and sees that Ixy is there. He takes a seat and looks over some files for missions he can give the necromancer dragon.

"Red Infinity is doing some reconstruction projects right now. Maybe you can summon an undead army to do construction work in Helsinki."

[Ixyanarosir]

"Reconstruction? As in killing everyone there and repopulating it with loyal, brainwashed puppets?"

[Kaschei]

"No, unfortunately not. This is the boring sort of reconstruction. As in, rebuilding houses, schools, and hospitals. You see, Zwei caused so much destruction that it is the duty of all Ministries to put the world back together."

[Peter "The Owl"]

Peter watches Zhen run without expression. Time slows as his system kick into high gear, his biological meters spiking. The world slows to a crawl.

He turns, following after Zhen as she runs behind a pile of scrap. When she leaps into the air he is slightly suprised. Arial attacks are rare among gun fighters.

His eyes raises, following the machine's upwards arc. He has all the time in the world to draw his other .60 cal and take a lead on the shot. The sound of the shell clearing Zhen's shotgun rings in Peter's ears but he focuses on his own shot.

The Light Sheild flares, deflecting away the shotgun shot, and Peter pulls the triggers, opening fire directly ahead of Zhen, firing into her path of travel and strafing the shot trail back towards her.

[Ixyanarosir]

"Wouldn't my undead army reconstructing the city look bad? I mean, I did raise the army from Helinski earlier when we marched on Northrend, and there were some... unavoidable casualties."

[Kaschei]

"I suppose that the undead may frighten a few people, but maybe once they see that the army of undead are really rebuilding the city, they won't mind. I swear, people are too squeemish."

[Ixyanarosir]

"This is true. If nothing else it will be amusing to watch the PR people try to come up with an explanation."