Snowe shrugged and handed the book back to Delta. "Aren't you curious about the implications of the note?" she asked, placing her knuckle on her lips, "I propose we travel to each of the temples. I believe there's something that every other Seeker missed... There is a passage within the tome that speaks of fragments of a 'key'. It suggests that each temple has one."

Snowe put her hands behind her head and leaned back a bit in her chair. "Of course, each of you may do what you will with this information. However, I cannot promise we won't end up on opposite ends of each other's blades, should we choose to part ways," Snowe paused and looked to Asha and Ayara, "Ah, forgive me, I am merely assuming you are Seekers. If not, you need not worry yourselves."

"Eeek! Sorry!" Adrian immediately pulled his hand back after her comment. Then he pondered for a moment. "Eh? Nano? Particle? Micro? Eh? What?" He thought, looking quite puzzled. Not having the slightest idea, he just shrugged it away with a content sigh. Relieved that he stopped thinking about it. After remembering the fact that he made the girl angry he started a silly attempt to explain himself. "O-oh yeah. You know, it's not all that bad being short. It is kinda cute and all, you know? And that's what make you unique! Your height suits you! Being tall isn't all that better actually, if you're as tall as your friend there, you might hit a door frame and all..." He explained, starting to have a bit of cold sweats, his face turned stiff.

There were too many dimwits around for Asha's comfort. The human hadn't spoken a whole lot, and as per usual it was her sister who made the attempt to start a conversation with one of the less... obnoxious patrons, to which Asha only nodded briefly when her name was mentioned before resuming her silent drinking.

The surgeon only looked up from her glass and took actual interest in the conversation when a peculiar looking tome was handed to the Rengeku. It looked old, very old. The kind of old that you wouldn't even find in the darkest corners of a library. Shifting a little to face the Rengeku, Asha pitched in to listen as some of the pages were read aloud.

Likewise, Ayara listened carefully to the passage being read from the tome. Much of it she and Asha had already been taught, but the missing pages regarding Lady Memory were quite... intriguing, to say the least. We never claimed to be gods? It sounded so ominous.

Sadly, many of the others present didn't have the sense to pay attention, and would rather disregard the importance of such an old tome. One of them was gooing over a shiny technological bauble, and another did not seem to fully comprehend what the note could mean.

"You would be better off not taking the gods so lightly." Ayara warned the lavender-haired girl. "Many's the mortal that has done just that, only for it to result in their undoing."

"What my sister means is that some of us are actually interested in this sort of thing." Asha growled. "So if you brats could bugger off and practice your idiocy elsewhere, that'd be great. Otherwise, shut your gums and listen. You might learn a thing or two." She shot the three young ones an angry glare, before turning back to the conversation at hand.

The Nilarian nodded in wholehearted agreement before directing her attention back to the Rengeku. "Seekers, you say? Well, we aren't, but you certainly have our interest. I assume it would make sense to begin our investigations at Lady Memory's temple, yes? We can begin travel at first light tomorrow morning."

“Since we’re on Verelden already, I think we should stop by the Temple of Emotions first. It would be more efficient that way.,” Snowe began, “But each temple deserves an equal amount of attention. We won’t be able to just waltz out with the key fragments, there will be some sort of test for each of them.”

Snowe looked around at the group, gazing into each pair of eyes as if searching them for something. “Now, I must warn each of you that this journey is not for the faint of heart. Some of the places we will have to go to are VERY dangerous. I urge you to think it over tonight.”

A black-haired human man interrupted before Snowe could say anything else, “Are you going to be going to all of these temples? If so I would like to accompany you if permitted. I have...something around that area which I would like to take care of.”

Snowe’s eyes went wide as the man approached and rose colored heat bloomed on her cheeks. She cleared her throat in a poor attempt to regain her composure. “Y-yes. We will be going to all of the temples,” she replied shakily.

The man nodded his head and then began “That’s just what I was hoping to hear, my name is Zyperious. I mainly work as an engineer of sorts, and I have some things around a few of the temples I would like to take care of. Seeing how you are already heading that way I figure no better way to get there than help others along the way.”

Snowe folded her arms, “Well, then, Zyperious... I’m sure that as long as you can make yourself useful while you are with us that the others would not mind having you around.” She looked to Delta and Apollo, then at the Nilarian and her sister, as if for approval.

Inside the massive mosaic temple, strange buzzing and loud sounds could be heard. Along with the roars of a strange creature. Most of the class had been smashed, along with a part of the roof being ripped open to allow a massive sound vortex to rip it's way through. However, as quick as it appeared, it also dissipated into nothing. Leaving the temple is a smashed up broken state.

Inside the main room stood three beings, one of which was a massive bulky creature, panting heavily as it stood in a pool of blood. Suddenly, it fell to the ground, the breathing had stopped along with the heart. The other two beings were the Elementum mercenaries, Kyle and Eve. Eve was standing back from the other two, her hands clapping while she smiled a great proud smile. "Well done, Kyle~!" She pulled a tissue from her satchel and held it out to her partner as she skipped towards him, "Although, it would be nice if you put on a proper show instead of holding back~"

Kyle turned around towards his partner, his breathing was a little faster than usual and his face covered in blood. He had used his Synchronisation to make things faster, proof of this was the source of the bleeding which had quickly stopped as soon as the Synchronisation was deactivated; His eyes, nose and mouth were the sources of the trails of blood down his face. It was a good thing he removed the top half of his clothing, otherwise they would be dirtied. "Nah, it wasn't that much of an effort. This kind of test was pretty boring..." He replied as he accepted the tissue, wiping his face clean of blood before throwing it on the floor. Along with that, he received his clothes from Eve and placed them back on his body, perfectly well done to look as formal as possible in the suit. "Now then..." He turned around to face the statue of a woman, holding a sword -the key fragment of Emotion-.

Stepping up onto the podium of which the statue was set on, Kyle placed his hands over the hilt and quickly pulled it out of the perfectly shaped hand, holding it with the blade rested on his other hand. "Is this it? Seems pretty dull..." He was expecting something else, like the statue attacking the two or something. Oh well...
Eve, who had been looking around the place with her hands behind her back spoke up; "Geez, Kyle... You wrecked this place! And our contractor said that others are on the way here..."
"I don't really care..." Kyle replied as he hopped down from the podium, walking towards the exit, holding the sword in one hand with his other holding a contacting device to his ear.
"Yeah, I got it. Get 'ere and give us the pay, then we'll head off to the next place."

---

The two were sitting in front of their ship outside of the temple, Eve standing with her hands behind her back and a great smile on her face. Her long blue hair and blue dress flowed in the breeze caused by a landing ship. Kyle, on the other hand, was crouching down on the floor, holding the sword over his shoulder.
As the ship opened, Kyle stood, walking towards the entrance to see a strange man, covered in shadows. "Right, give the money first."
A bag of money was thrown to the floor in front of Kyle, a pale, wrinkled hand followed, opened to receive the sword. "Here..." Kyle placed the hilt in the hand, allowing it to quickly retract into the ship. A piece of paper was thrown to the ground before the ship closed up and lifted off to return to it's home.
Taking the bag of money and throwing it to Eve to place in her satchel, Kyle opened the folded paper and read it. 'The next place is Ysailun, the Temple of Peace. Make sure you don't break my ship.' Kyle blew a little more air through his nose to show laughter before heading off to the ship, followed by the giddy, smiling Eve.

"We're going to Ysailun."

The two sisters watched as the lavender-haired girl blathered on about how many books she'd read about the gods. Anyone could tell she was being little more than a childish windbag, and by the time she was going on about a knife being only half a millimeter thick, they knew something was up. Didn't she know anything about measurements? Any material that thin would either fold like paper or snap like a dry leaf, especially silver. Odds are she was merely trying to sound intelligent, and failing at it.

At this point Asha was fed up with these kids more than anyone. With nothing more than a discontented sigh, the woman seized the opportunity to snatch the book from incompetent hands lest they continue their ridiculous theorizations that, quite frankly, made her head throb. "Here." Asha handed the book to her sister, knowing that she wouldn't make these illogical assumptions.

Ayara quickly thanked Asha, although she couldn't help but wince at the book's rough treatment, especially given the condition it was in. Time hadn't been kind to the tome, that much was certain. Carefully leafing through the pages, the Nilarian eventually found where the pages regarding Lady Memory had been removed. She frowned. Something was not quite right here...

"And?" Asha asked, leaning in to take a look at the pages, or lack thereof, herself.

"I'm trying to concentrate." Ayara blocked out any distractions and focused her attention on the pages. They had not been torn out by hand, nor had they been cut out by a knife or any sort of implement. She could sense something that still lingered where the pages had been removed. It was very faint, but it was still there...

"Magic," she said, after a time. "These pages have been removed by magical means. How or why, I don't know, but whoever did it failed to completely cover their tracks."

"Ahh, but perhaps those tracks were not meant to covered completely," Snowe said musingly, "but I suppose that is a question for another day. We should all be getting to bed." It had been dark for a while and it was getting late. If the party was going to start their journey first thing in the morning, they would need their rest.

After bidding everyone good night, the group had parted ways and headed into their respective rooms. Snowe lay curled up in her bed, holding her dragon companion close to her side. As usual, sleep did not come easily for Snowe, but, tonight, Noramir seemed to find that it eluded her as well.

"Snowe?" Noramir spoke to her in telepathy.

"Yes?" She replied.

"What happened when the dark-haired man spoke to you.. was something wrong?"

"It's… Complicated… He's not even supposed to be here…"

"Snowe…."

She sighed softly. "Noramir, do you know what a soulmate is?"

"I am.. familiar with the concept."

"Well, he and I met a very… very long time ago."



The next morning, Snowe stood at the front of the inn, waiting for the others. She gazed into the still dimly lit sky and she could already tell that it was going to be a long, hard day. There was a heaviness to the air. She felt as if she had lost something. Something very important. "I think our trial has already begun," she whispered, "this is going to be a lot harder than I thought..."

A middle aged man, dressed in rags was pushed and held against a wall by Kyle's foot. Kyle was showing amazing flexibility, with his leg held up high enough for the foot to press against the man's throat, while Kyle still managed to hold his face close to the other's.
"Awww... You guys got my sword dirty~" Eve sighed as she swung her sword to flick the blood off of it, placing it back into her sheathe as she stepped over five fresh corpses, mutilated beyond description.
The man squeeked a little in fear before he spoke out towards Kyle, "I-I-I'm sorry! I d-didn't know you were E-Elementum... I-I'm sorry for stabbing you!"
"You shouldn't have tried to gang up on us to mug us then, pathetic Human." Kyle replied in monotone, his face showing no emotion while his eye stared straight into the man's, as if it were staring into his soul.
"P-please... D-don't turn me into one of... t-them!" The man pleaded as he gestured to the corpses,
"That depends, tell me about the Temple of Peace. Where can I find the city of Kindan Vhil?" Kyle demanded, pressing his foot forward a bit more,
"Ugh! I-It's north from here, hard to miss, it's a floating city!"
"What about the Temple? What test is there?"
"I have no idea! B-but I know someone who does! The leader of the bandit group I'm in used to be a seeker before he was deterred by the Temple of Peace, the first Temple he visited!"
"Where is he?"
"I-In the floating city, the abandoned werehouses."

Kyle released his foot and kicked the man to the ground, "Y-you'll let me live now?" The man questioned, his trousers wettened from his own urine which had appeared through fear.
"You won't give word about us." Kyle demanded, looking down to the man, his eye showing pity.
"Of course! I don't even know you! Who are you? Can I help? I've never met you before!"
"You're lying." Kyle muttered, hearing the further increased heartbeat of the man along with the small change in the man's eyes.
"Wai-" CRACK! Kyle swung his foot towards the man's head, snapping his neck. He then turned away, heading towards his spaceship to get to the city.

"Let's go, Eve, we gotta find this idiot."
"Yes~!"