Chase walked through the rustling fall leaves as he awaited the Unity members at the small stone bridge that led the way toward the Crystal lake that Olympia stood upon.
He had been quite confused after the dream that felt like years...
Unlike previous dreams he had remembered several core concepts of the dream, including vague memories of things that he just simply refused to forget.
They needed to return to Olympia...
He lifted the mask resembling an onyx skull from his face, letting his scarred skin breathe.
In his dreams his face had fused with his Lumen-his skin melting together with the scales of the mask.
In reality, his face had been damaged quite a bit, but not to the extent of his lumen becoming a permanent replacement for his human face.
His entire body had been damaged quite a lot, and his catalyst was currently being rotted away by corruption, but he was still kicking.
The dreams had given him insight to how the corruption worked, and how he could cure it, in fact... Inside of his Chestplate's padding, was a small baggy that held the flower pedal Summer had given him.
All he needed for the cure to work, was to learn how to use Mental Energy...
That was already a tall task... But the corruption would take quite a while to kill him with the sealing of both his Phoenix flames and The Lunar Goddess...
Luna had insisted that Chase sealed her and his incompatible affinity with reversal magic so that his rot would take much longer.
With both of those passive traits being active, more energy is burnt within his catalyst, making his natural protection system have less energy to combat the corruption.
So the golden and Silver shackles resting on his left wrist meant something of extraordinary, as they marked the eternal purpose that Chase needed to find-his reason for existing...
After killing Rider, he had gone through countless mental errors, countless roadblocks, and clear effects of having been through the things that he had up to this point.
It was impossible to not dream about the faces that he had promised himself not too forget...
He would sometimes find himself staring into the void during meals with his friends, or saying words and phrases that made no sense to him, and sometimes even mindlessly walking to the edge of a nearby rooftop...
When they had camped out in the mountains one night during their journey-Chase found himself looking over the edge with emptiness in his eyes.
All he could see was that day in The Dark Forest...
He could hear the whispers of the dead... The souls of the fallen... Guiding him towards the bottom of the descent... Asking him what purpose remained within this life...
But the voices only reminded him more and more why he should keep going...
He had tried to write his wrongs within the dream... But it was impossible, every time he tried to fix something, or save someone-the dream went wrong anyway.
But the reason they had departed on this journey, had been Olympia... And they had passed through mindlessly, not even asking themselves what it was that they were looking for.
That's why they had to go back, the dream reminded him of something... It made him realize that there is always value in going back... And that something extremely powerful lies beneath those ruins...
It was calling him...
He drew his topaz dagger the instant he heard the rustle of leaves behind him.
"Woah! Woah! It's me Griffin!" The short and skinny boy with long golden hair said-raising his arms in surrender.
Chase tilted his head, remembering the strange image of the face who had been at the wedding, remembering the bard who had played both of those very different songs.
"I don't know you..." He eventually said with a dangerous scowl on his face, as the wind rustled the onyx mask resting over the corner of his head. Following with it, was his muddied long hair with his original golden streaks shining weakly underneath the stain of cursed mud.
The boy frowned with crooked eyebrows. "Griffin of House Harpy? The official Bard of Unity! Come on man, it was you who invited me to join after I saved you from the fire..."
Chase's mouth was agape as he tried to recall what the boy was talking about, before immediately shutting him down. "Hell no! Are you an idiot? I cannot die to flames, I was perfectly fine in that fire... It was your awful music that nearly took me out!"
He complained with a roll of his eyes.
"Hi guys!"
"Sup?" Neveah and Kaylynn of House Kore greeted simultaneously. Neveah had an energetic look on her eyepatch covered face, and her bags propped over he giant bronze great sword that hung lazily to her back.
Kaylynn looked tired and slightly annoyed, with her brunette hair tied up in a ponytail.
Behind them-Equan, Michael, Gabriel, and Gemini walked together, Equan recalling his fifteenth retell of how he and Gabriel had infiltrated the city of Equus-only exaggerated so much that it included sneaking past Rider in his bedchambers on this retelling.
Behind them-was Luke and Leo, who conversed freely about the most fashionable armor styles of this decade as if the two had not hated each other in recent years.
Chase eyed Reinhart at the back of the group, who wore a determined yet saddened expression on his face.
Chase nodded to himself with a deep breath.
"Alright guys... Sorry I woke you all up so urgently... But we need to return to Olympia... But be prepared-I fear that we may find something we don't want to find down there...."
"Are you gonna try to get us all killed again?" Michael asked with a short laugh.
Chase grinned.
"Try to keep up and you won't get killed..."