Part 19

For most people on Sky Empress, it was their first time visiting Kelin's home city. Seeing it in such a bad shape, they sent their condolences to Kelin. He stopped this, however. He told them that he accepted his actions and that there is no point in regret. Besides, he was glad to see from the air that the rebuilding has been progressing well. The city might someday restore its glory. At least the gathering crowd down below seemed to have recovered from the disaster. Once the Empress landed, the people swarmed around, wishing to see this legendary ship that they only heard about.

An impromptu meeting between the Duke Mehlis, Knight Commander Riemann and Warriors of Light was made at the castle. Mari skipped that meeting since she had the least reason of being there and gave her place to Noelle and Lianna. Instead, she took Lianna's subordinate Masatoki and went around the city looking for Unne. While they were doing that, others were sharing their exploits to the Duke and the Knight Commander. Those two were glad to hear good news from the city's saviours. They also had good news to share. Elfheim, Dwarfheim and Cornelia started a big investment into a navy in order to secure the new channel so there should be increase in trade coming to the city. Even Hoshido has shown some interest recently. As for the monsters in the area, the Knights of Dusk have been proactive in their duty to keep the area and they even had a surprising help with them. While sage Sadda had yet to return from Hoshido, his golem Maxlo was actively helping the knights hunt down any monster that could threaten the city.

When it came time for Noelle's proper introduction, it was interrupted by Masatoki who requested the Warriors to come to Unne's place as soon as they could as something came up. While surprised and confused at this, they nevertheless followed him back to Unne's place. Also referred to as Dr. Unne, he was considered one of best historians in Feinan. His expertise was on the Kingdom of Lufenia and he has been trying to decipher their language. His humble house hid a lot of documents with ties to the kingdom. When the Warriors entered the house, they were surprised to see that Mari was nowhere to be seen. All they could see in his living room were books spread across the room. On the table there was a small note above a stone tablet that said "Read me". Either by glancing at it or by reading it, all 3 started having pulsing headaches and fell on their knees. As they were trying to figure out what was happening, a voice was heard behind them. "It is true, then." Lewyn, thinking the person who said that was an enemy, turned around and wanted to charge at him. However, Mari stopped him. "Wait!" Just relax. It will be over in a second."

Kelin: "Mari? W-what's going on?"

Mari: " Just relax, okay?"

As they finally relaxed, they waited for a moment before their headaches went away.

Rosch: "Would you mind explaining what just happened, Mari? Why did you call us here?"

Mari: "I think you will realize if you check the tablet over there."

Rosch: "The Rosetta Stone? Why?"

Kelin: "I will do it. Let's see. I, Rosetta Korvin, queen of... queen of... Wait a moment."

Mari: "You realized it, didn't you?"

Kelin: "How's this possible?"

Mari: "It happened to me earlier too. I think it's because of the blessing that the crystals give us."

Kelin: "Unbelievable."

Lewyn: "Wait, so it's not just me, right? I can understand what it says there?"

Mari: "Oh, yes. It seems that we can understand any Lufenian text or document that we come across?"

Unne: "I was honestly shocked to see that she understood any document I gave her to read. Oh, right. I should introduce myself."

Rosch: "Doctor Unne, I presume?"

Unne: "That's right. I must say, I didn't expect this day to go as it has."

Kelin: "And it's not even over yet. I think we still have more surprises left in store.

Unne: "Like what?"

Kelin: "Would you like to see the Lufenian marvel up close and personal?"

Unne: "Wait, really?"

Mari: "I was going to suggest that. We can finally unlock a lot of airship systems now."

Lewyn: "Then what are we waiting here for? We should get Lianna and return back to the airship."

Kelin: "Let's go."

And so everyone left Unne's home and returned back to the Empress. There, they spent the remainder of the day fiddling with the onboard systems trying to unlock and fix navigational issues such as landing areas. Among the subsystems unlocked that day was a full world map accessible from the bridge. There they found something unusual. According to the map, something important was indicated in the eastern Scardona as well as a tower in the middle of the continent. It seemed they had their next course determined already. As gratitude for his help with deciphering Lufenian, they allowed Unne to follow them along and explore these markers. Once resupplied and rested, they took off for Scardona.

Eastern Scardona has been considered one of the least explored areas in the world. Separated from the rest of the continent via Brethlia mountain range, very few explorers ever set foot east of the mountains. Even those that set off from Hoshido and travelled to the area via sea could only see the endless forests infested with monsters. As such, it came as a massive shock for everyone on the Sky Empress to see an impressive city standing in the middle of those endless forests. Everyone stared from the deck at the beautiful white stone buildings that composed the city architecture. Meanwhile, the sight of the airship above them was attracting a crowd that was getting bigger. By the time the ship found a nice landing place, the crowd that followed the airship was now in the hundreds, maybe even thousands. Having experience in situations such as these, they patiently waited until the royal guard established order at the scene and, after a quick talk with the captain of the guard, they were escorted into the royal palace to meet the Queen.

After their introduction to the Queen and retelling of their adventures so far, the Warriors of Light heard the condensed history of the Kingdom. Once the Kingdom came under the attack of the Fiend of Air Tiamat, the evacuation of its citizens began onto any airship they could use. Unfortunately, due to surprise of the attack and the severity of it, only one fifth managed to escape and survive the fall of the kingdom. The entire royal family as well most of important people failed to save themselves. The person in charge of the evacuation, Lehmann Amalthea, took over as the leader of the survivors and established new capital and eventually recreated the kingdom with his descendants as the nee royal family. The current Queen, Safiya Amalthea, was his distant descendant. After this short history lesson, the Warriors of Light invited the Queen to see their airship and to hopefully understand the history behind it. The Queen accepted and, after inviting one of the historians who knew the most about the old technology, followed the Warriors to their airship.

Once there, Warriors started their entourage around the ship. There were few incidents with the crew as only 5 people knew the Lufenian language, but they were quickly resolved. Once they were shown around, they returned to the bridge to hear the history lesson about the ship. While most of the information was lost to history, historians did confirm that this was their ship and not just any ship. It was made by a brilliant engineer of the past, a man by the name of Cid. This was one of his projects that he was constructing for the kingdom and it was planned as the royal vessel, but the fall of the kingdom stopped the plan from coming into fruition. Now it served as the last reminder of the glory of the past as all other airships were lost long ago. The historian also reminded the Queen of two major things that he recalled. One was about the legend of Light Bearers which now came true. The second was more sinister. Among the projects that he was building for the kingdom, it was said that Cid was developing a powerful mechanical weapon to guard the kingdom at the time of the fall. As it stood, there has not been any records around about its fate so there was a chance that it still existed and might have even been forced to do Tiamat's bidding. Warriors promised that they would be on lookout for it.

By the time anyone had noticed it, night was already approaching so all future plans discussions was saved for the next day and for everyone onboard the airship a celebratory dinner was organized. The next morning, before the next meeting started, there was a surprise waiting for Lianna and Mari. Rare scrolls containing the instructions on how to use Full-Life and Flare, some of the most powerful spells around, were gifted to them. They were very grateful for such a gift. As the discussion started, an obvious problem was introduced to the Lufenian side. Even after system unlocks performed in Melmond, the airship would still not fly at the same altitude as the Flying Fortress, the only piece of land still floating above Scardona. As such, they had to find another way and that was where the tower marker from the map came into play. The so-called Mirage Tower was created as another way of travel between the old kingdom and the rest of the continent. It remained marked at the ship's map and was now the only way to travel to the Flying Fortress. Lufenians promised to provide a chime for the Warriors which allowed to access the Tower, but they needed something to unlock the teleporter inside the tower. As it turned out, that something was already onboard the airship. The remains of the robot that they recovered from the cave had something called the Warp Cube which allowed the teleporter to work properly. That robot must have detected the activation of the airship and so tried to reach it in hopes of helping the Warriors. Grateful for its success, the Warriors gave the remains back to Lufenians to hopefully fix it or maybe  at least access some of its memory. After several days of rest and preparations, the Sky Empress finally took to the sky and headed west towards the Mirage Tower.

As the old kingdom of Lufenia slowly expanded across the sky, it needed rich soil that was continuously taken from the land below. The creation of the so-called Yahnikurm Desert was already present at the time of the kingdom's fall and today it had taken nearly the entire central Scardona. Very few traces of the civilizations that once lived there had remained on the surface. One such ruin was the Mirage Tower. Originally designed as a another way to travel between the kingdom and the rest of the continent, it now stood as the only link between the Flying Fortress and the Warriors of Light. After landing Sky Empress nearby, Warriors entered the tower, expecting the monsters to swarm it. As it turned out however, the old guardians of the tower were still operational, guarding the tower as if no time had passed at all. That couldn't have been said about their shells as centuries of no maintenance had left them in decrepit state and their programming failed to identify Warriors as anything other than just another threat. What was worse was that a monster tribe made a den for themselves inside the first floor using underground entrance that avoided guardian patrol. So when the Warriors tried to avoid the guardians by ducking into one of the rooms, all hell broke lose as a three-way battle ensued.

In an attempt to escape from this chaos, the Warriors found the stairwell and tried to climb it. Unfortunately, a group of guardians was climbing down the stairs right at that moment. While the Warriors tried to get into a battle formation, a group of Chimeras charged behind them. Stuck between the two groups, Rosch had no other choices bit to cast as many Blizzagas as he could. Once he destroyed both groups, everyone started climbing to the third floor, hoping that their path was now clear. That hope came crashing down as soon as they stepped onto the floor, revealing a massive groups of guardians. Rosch and Mari were preparing to cast defence spells while Kelin and Lewyn were preparing to charge. However, this group of guardians didn't attack. Instead, they let their commander pass through and it muttered something that surprised the Warriors. "MasTER?" Surprised at that word, they could only stare at it as they tried to realize what was happening now. "IT is you, new MASTER. EVERYONE, guard the MASter. Please, THIS way." Unsure of what was going on, the Warriors still accepted the commander's invite which proves beneficial as a blue dragon was climbing behind them. As soon as it reached the third floor, guardians pummelled it with their lasers. Meanwhile, the Warriors were being escorted further into the tower as more guardians passed them to join the fray below. "Excuse me, um, robot", Kelin nervously asked. "What do you mean by new master?" The guardian answered him directly. "We SENSED the activation of the ROYAL airship so we sent OUR fellow GUARdian to deliver the WARP cube. I AM Glad to see the cube REAChed your SAfe hands. We can finally LIBERATE the kingdom." "You have been active since the fall of the kingdom?" Mari chimed in. "YES, WE have been patiently returning for THE return of the ROyal family. I am escorting YOU to the Warp Room. THERE you can go to the FLYing Fortress." "Well, "master", what will you order your fellow subjects?" Lewyn joked as he remembered that it was Kelin who was carrying the cube in his backpack. Kelin asked: "Are there any weapons we could use in the fight ahead?" "YES, few pieces of weaPONS and armour have survived and are WAITIng in the Warp Room." "Good, take us there. And while you are at it, order all guardians to clear the tower." "Yes, MILORD."

After arriving at the Warp Room, Kelin gave cube to the head guardian while others went to check the promised equipment and weapons. Those that survived and were usable shape were: Healing Helm, Vorpal Sword, Sun Blade, Dragon Mail and Thor's Hammer. Mari picked up Thor's Hammer as it was better than hers and could cast Thundara, a spell she couldn't use. Meanwhile Rosch picked up the Sun Blade. As for the rest, they were left behind as they might weigh them too much and they would pick it up later. Once the cube was set up, the head guardian confirmed it to others and as they stepped into the warp circle, he said: "Good luck, MASTER" and teleported them to the Flying Fortress.

After the flash of light that surrounded them, the Warriors found themselves in an unfamiliar room. Seeing no enemies in there, they took a short rest to heal up and restore their magic. Once the rest was up, they existed to a familiar sight, but one from the perspective they were seeing for the first time. They truly were so high up. While standing and looking at the sight, a patrol of black knights spotted them and raised the alarm. While again the enemies were rushing at them in large numbers, the narrow passages of the fortress made it easy to divide and conquer and, unlike the chaos that happened earlier, they knew what was happening so they were able to stop ambushes from behind and fight more effectively. After noticing that a patrol teleported in, the Warriors went to the place where the patrol appeared and noticed a teleportation circle. Without hesitation, they stepped in and ended up on the second floor.

There awaited for them a flock of chimeras and manticores. Nothing that Rosch and Mari couldn't handle with their ranged spells. Meanwhile, Kelin and Lewyn were successfully dealing with patrolling medusas. Once done, they started towards the next teleporter guarded by three stone golems. Seeing the opponents, the golems engaged, only to get pulverized by the Warriors. One hit by each member was enough to destroy them completely. The Warriors finally realized just how far they have come in this past year or so. Once the route was open, they stepped inside and teleported to the third floor. Expecting more fights, they were surprised to found themselves inside with another one of the guardians. "MASter, we have been WAIting for you." This guardian was activated just now after getting the signal from the Mirage Tower. It rerouted the party to the armoury where it wanted to give them weapons and armour for their fight up ahead. While the party refused to take him up on his offer, as they didn't want to get bogged down by it, Rosch did take up a Protect Cloak for himself. As for the rest of this stuff, Kelin informed the guardian to keep guard over it and that they would pick it up another time. The guardian acknowledged the order and sent them on their way.

On the fourth floor there was something about it that seemed strange. The massive hallways were much bigger compared to the rest of the fortress as if it belonged to another building all together. The air elementals, the monsters present on that floors seemed to have kept appearing out of nowhere. What was worse was that in every direction that they went in, they somehow ended up back at the same place, right where they have teleported in. While trying to figure out what was going on, more elementals kept appearing. Trying to stem the wave of enemies, Mari casted Thundara at the direction they were coming from. Not only did that attack kill a large number of elementals, but it also caused someone to scream in pain. Hearing this, Rosch followed up with a Firaga, shattering the illusion that they were in and badly burning up the vampire who caused it. That vampire tried to mock the party by saying: "You never reach my-", but Kelin stabbed him and, before he turned him into an ice sculpture, told him: "Stay out of our way." Once the vampire was dead, the party had an easy finding the teleporter to the last floor.

There, they saw in the distance a familiar set-up. A green sphere was standing between them and the Wind Crystal. Knowing what awaited them, they stopped to rest and heal up any wounds they had. Once ready, they stepped forward and approached the sphere. On their approach they heard a voice. "The lich, Marilith, the kraken... You have defeated three Fiends and reached my lofty perch." Once they were close enough, the sphere turned into a huge 6-headed azure dragon. Once towering over the party, it loudly exclaimed: "More the better... May the image of Tiamat, the Fiend of Wind, be the last to burn in your eyes!" It went for Lewyn first, its bite attack nearly chomping his arm. Lewyn returned the favour by sending it back reeling with just one punch. Lewyn casted Saber on himself while Mari and Rosch stepped up with Haste and Invisra. Before Mari could cast off Protera, Tiamat went for Kelin. His Diamond Shield held the attack long to stab into one of the jaws. With Rosch's Temper on him, Lewyn went on a rampage, destroying one of the heads. Before it could do anything to stop him, Rosch's Blizzaga froze it in its place and Mari's Thundara shocked it a lot, leaving for Kelin to finish the job by piercing Tiamat's heart. The Fiend died with one of the loudest screams that anyone had ever heard. With that, the last Fiend was dealt with. After calming down and taking a short break, they approached the Crystal and allowed Rosch to do his action. Once the Wind Crystal returned to its bright colour, they knew that their job was over and so they stepped into the portal behind the Crystal and returned back to the surface for a proper rest up.

After taking a full day of rest on the Sky Empress, the Warriors went inside to finish inspecting the tower as well as to pick up the treasures and see what happened to the supposed mechanical weapon that should still exist. While the monsters were still around in the tower, most of them were handled by the tower guardians, so without much delay party picked up the treasure that they left behind the day prior and then they reached the fortress again. There, the situation was still in favour of monsters as shown by the two Spirit Nagas that awaited for them as soon as they exited the teleport room. Those two, however, stood no chance in front of such an experienced party. Again, without much delay they continued until they reached the 3rd floor where they made a disturbing discovery. On that floor there was a large orb that showed the entire world that they missed previously. They thought that it was nothing important until the guardian that helped them the day before activated the globe and showed them something that would prove to be troubling. As it turned out, if you drew lines from all 4 places that contained the Crystals, there was one spot where they intersect with one another. That spot was the Chaos Shrine. Worried about the implications of this, the Warriors made an oath to deliver this information to the Sages as soon as they could. However, there was still one more floor they needed to check out.

The 4th floor was largely unknown to the party as that illusion kept them from exploring the rest of it. As it turned out, most of it was empty except for two rooms. One of the rooms contained the armoury with a large number of weapons and armour just waiting for the Warriors to pick up. Once they cleaned the room, they ended up with: a Healing Helm, 2 Protect Rings, a sword known as Razer that could cast the rare spell Scourge, another diamond shield and gloves, another ribbon, a Black Robe that could cast Blizzara, a White Robe that could cast Invisra, another Mythril Helm, a sword known as Sasuke's Blade and finally a large chunk of rare metal known as adamantite. That was quite a haul that they have found in one place and it made them happy. Even if they wouldn't be able to use most of these, they could still sell these to armourers and blacksmiths around the world that could potentially relearn the techniques of the past. With high hopes they left the armoury and went to inspect the last room.

The last room seemed to be a some kind of a mechanical shop, similar to one that engineers made for themselves on the Sky Empress. While trying to fiddle in dark, someone bumped into a switch that triggered the light to appear, showing everyone that this was much bigger room than they expected with something very large at the end of it. A large green bipedal machine drew everyone's attention as it stood silently at the back of the room. Its legs were similar to birds and two tanks were perturbing from its back with hoses that ran across its body and connected beneath its strange face that had three eyes. Thinking that this was the machine that they were warned about, they approached it, believing it not to be working. Unfortunately, when they activated the lights, they also triggered its system to boot up. As its red eye started glowing, it said: "ENEMIES DETECTED. ELIMINATING THE THREAT." That immediately forced the party into fighting stance as it started firing on Kelin. Mari casted Invisra, trying to throw off its aim, but it seemed to have no effect as it always found the mark. Rosch hurried up with casting Haste and Temper on Kelin while Lewyn grabbed the Giant's Gloves, casted Saber on himself and went on trying to pummel on this new threat. However, its metal construction meant that Lewyn's hits barely had any effects on it and he couldn't even stagger it. While Mari was casting Protera, trying to keep Kelin in the fight, Rosch casted Haste to Lewyn, trying to give him a chance. As it started to cast a massive fireball that would kill everyone, everyone went into beast mode, wailing at it with all of their strength and trying to destroy this thing. Finally, the armour cracked under Lewyn's savage blows and combined strikes from Rosch and Kelin sliced its head, finally making it stop working. After getting a chance, everyone collapsee as this was probably their most exhausting fight yet. Kelin's shield was deformed from defending all those laser attacks, some of which got deflected to his legs, burning his skin beneath the armour. On the other end, Lewyn went so hard into punching this thing that his hands were bleeding profusely. While Rosch and Mari were healing them back to normal, everyone struck a conversation.

Lewyn: So this was the weapon that was supposed to guard Lufenia?

Mari: It seems so. It was apparently unfinished at the time of the fall.

Kelin: If this is what they call unfinished, I don't want to know what completed version looks like.

Lewyn: Yeah, just try to imagine what one of these would do if they sent this onto the battlefield.

Rosch: I'll do you one better. Imagine multiple of these on the battlefield. Here you go, all healed up.

Lewyn: Thanks. Also, thanks for the nightmare.

Rosch: My pleasure.

Mari: And that should be it for you. You can stand now.

Kelin: Thank you. Now, let's look around. Maybe we can find some Cid's notes that he left behind.

All 4 went around searching. They found many useful blueprints such as those for guardians and soon enough they found the main prize. The blueprints for the experimental weapon known as Warmech. After everyone had taken a peak at it, they wondered what would have had happened had the weapon been finished. Would have Lufenia still fallen then? They initially wanted to bring these back. But silence ensued as each of them had a horrifying realization on earlier comments. While war wasn't common in Feinan, it wasn't also out of the possibility as history showed.

The only reason why Pravoka existed as an independent city-state was due to the war between Cornelia and Hoshido over 70 years ago. As diplomatic relations were worsening at the time, more people found refuge in Pravoka from both sides. Refusing to believe the war was justified, the city rebelled, surprising both sides and forcing them to the negotiations table. In the end the so-called Treaty of Pravoka established the city as the independent city-state and a buffer between the two larger nations. As relations improved and the hostilities calmed down, the city was allowed to trade in peace. Unfortunately, the independence became a double-edged sword as between the focus on their own towns and villages on Kaldean Sea and the destruction of Ribahn Bridge on Cornelian side and the internal issues on Hoshidan side, it meant that neither nation was able to support the nation during the pirates' coup. Thankfully, the Warriors of Light kicked the pirates out and ended their reign. But what if the pirates managed to get the plans and build the Warmech during their reign? Or worse, what if the dark elves got hold of these? Maybe then they could have rebuild their nation in their king's glory. Just because they shared the designs among the nations' governments, it didn't mean that they wouldn't end up in the wrong hands.

Knowing this, it only took a few looks between the Warriors to be on the same page. They salvaged few blueprints, such as those for guardians and magical artefacts. Then Mari and Rosch used Fire and Scourge spells to destroy the rest of them. Then Rosch finished up with a Blizzaga to make it appear as if they tried to save the blueprints. After that, everyone went down the floor to find the guardian and tell him the embellished story. Kelin used his status as Tower's master and ordered the remains of the Warmech to be destroyed as he was worried that its remains might be used by Tiamat's underlings. After making a code phrase to ensure that only Lufenians and whoever the party deemed as allies to enter the Tower and the Fortress, their task there was done. After returning to the top floor and using the teleportation circle there, they were back on the surface and brought their haul back to the Sky Empress.