nya! I almost got as mad as Rhen was! ^^ I love how your writing can do that!

Sorry for being a nitpicky bastard... But I don't think those minotaurs can talk. They're not exactly minotaurs after all. They're "myrs", they just look like minotaurs for the lack of variety in the game making programs' default pixels

skfdsklfjsdlkjf.

changing minotaur--> myr is not a big deal.
But I specifically need a species of sentient monster.

lkgjdflkjgfdkljglfkdjglkj

suggestions? Except I don't know how it would help since I don't think Rhen/Lars will be regularly traveling off to the demon cave every day to fight monsters. the whole point of the lamp was that it was convenient and instant


(waaah I dun wanna rewrite it. TT___TT)

*pats Blurble on the back* It's okay it's okay... Don't mind my outlandish corrections. I'm just a nitpicky nerd D:

If you really take my words to heart and feel like you MUST change them, you can describe the myrs as "minotaurs with odd colours and wings". If I remember correctly, regular minotaurs are brown like cows and don't have wings. These "myrs" are red and purple and they have wings.

OTL THIS is the reason why I can't write: I'm JUST THAT NITPICKY that everything SEEMED WRONG to me so I make a BAJILLION corrections and in the end got so tired of it that I eventually threw out the story altogether.

No except I do like my fanfic to be as accurate as I can get them...


dlkjdfdfskl.
whatever.

alefhvbkjhbvs Same with me. That's why I've been going around asking AV-related questions... Can't exactly go back to the game every time to check up facts.

Anything else you need?

PS: edited my post a bit up there. Not sure if you saw what changed.

(thanks for the corrections. I'll go back and change it. just not tonight. tonight my procrastinating form work is taking the form of marathon-reading Nodame Cantabile)

I'm just a nitpicky nerd. Glad you don't mind my nitpicky-ness.

Actually, there ARE dragons in lampland. The lightning dragons are at the outside area of lampland while the myrs are in the castle.

Uh, I never said there aren't any dragons. I just said there's only ONE dragon so it's impossible for it to attack in flocks. ONE =/= many.

Except for piles of leftover monster goop, their path back to the entrance was clear. Lars, other than letting that one myr get through, had done his job and protected their way back properly.

Rhen felt enormously encouraged by the ease with which they had dispatched the myrs. “I really think we’re getting better,” she said, excitedly. “I think even back when we were a full party it wasn’t much easier than this.”

“Yeah, don’t get ahead of yourself,” Lars said, wearily. “We were lucky today, lots of critical hits on our part and missed attacks on theirs. And a clumsily executed attack formation- I don’t think we should rely on it too much.”

“Well, sure,” Rhen said, walking backwards for a moment so she could face him as she talked, “but nonetheless even if it was partially a fluke, that we managed to get in so many good shots still means somethi- AAH!”

She slipped on a tile slick with monster guts and flailed as she fell backwards hard, landing on her leg at an awkward angle so that it splayed out underneath her.

She moaned, as the pain spasmed through her like a knife.

Lars was at her side in an instant.

“Rhen? Are you okay? Did you break anything?”

She stopped him as he was raising his hands to perform a healing spell.

“Don’t bother,” she said, shakily. “It’s not broken, I think- just twisted a little maybe.”

“I could still-“ he said.

“You suck at healing spells,” she said, bluntly. “I’d rather just take a potion, really.”

“I do not!” He said, indignant.

“Yes, you do.” She said, and despite the pain in her leg she laughed. “Do you remember that time in the Demon Caverns? I tripped on that big rock and got a huge gash across my knee… and then you tried to heal me and somehow managed to make an enormous rockslide. Dameon ended up having to heal me while Elini summoned a Daeva to extricate us.”

“I was just-“

“Or that other time, in Sedona? One of the streetlamps exploded and I went blind for a day or so and you probably would’ve, I don’t know, turned me into a frog or something if Elini hadn’t bodily restrained you-“

“I would not!” He protested.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“…Okay, fine. But my intentions were good!“

“Intentions shmentions, I’d much rather try my luck with an elixir, if you please,” she said, and reached for a bottle, only to find she was all out. She turned beseechingly towards him and he handed her one, then ended up helping her drink it because her hand was shaking too much to hold it properly.

She drank deeply and barely grimaced at the sickly-sweet taste, felt the feeling of it wash over her, leaving her tingling in an unpleasant way.

“I guess you wish it was Dameon here with you,” he said, a bit sulkily.

Even through the haze of elixir-induced dizziness, she could still hear the bitter edge in his voice.

“That’s not what I meant, Lars-“

“No, no, you mean it when you say my healing sucks.”

“Well. Okay, yeah. I do. But-“

“But what?” He said, turning on her, with a bile that surprised her. “He’s clearly better able to help you than I am- and you still love him. It should seem obvious you’d wish he were here instead of me.”

“I don’t love Dameon!”

“You said it yourself that you thought you didn’t but really you did!”

“I- He- It’s complicated, Lars, but it’s not like that! I don’t love him that way at all anymore, it’s a different kind of- Honestly, if I had anyone I loved that way right now it would probably be-“

She broke off.

“Probably be…?” He prompted.

“Master Harald,” she said, firmly.

“What?” He exclaimed.

“W-What!? He’s, um. He’s really kind… and, um, sweet-“ She flailed desperately for something to say. In a sudden burst of inspiration she said, “and when he smiles-“

“Once in a century.”

“Yes, that. When he smiles, it’s like the whole world lights up!”

“You realize he’s about a million times older than you! If he ever liked you back it would nearly be pedophilia!”

“Our love transcends such petty boundaries!” she exclaimed, dramatically- because she was about to burst into laughter, from the sheer absurdity of the situation- even as she felt herself blushing bright red. “Mere mortals like you could never hope to understand!”

“Mere mortals like me.”

“Yes.”

“I did not think this was possible, but Rhen Darzon, you have proven yourself to be even more bizarre than my wildest imaginings. And I traveled around the world with a Elini and Mad Marge, so I have some pretty special wild imaginings.”

“I think,” she said, “I think the potion has pretty much run its course now, actually.” She swallowed- She was either going to laugh or cry. Or both. It would probably be a good idea to escape now.

“Maybe we should, um, get going. I think I’m going to pass on eating out with you tonight. I’m kinda tired. I think I might just head to bed.”

“Now you’re really making me concerned,” he said, half-joking. “You? Turning down food?”

She shrugged, as noncommittally as possible. “Maybe some other time,” she said, forcing herself to sound as light-hearted as possible, and then she fled.

----

She found that she was lying in bed in her pajamas staring blankly at the ceiling without really remembering how she had gotten there.

She felt… There wasn’t an adjective for the end of that sentence. She just felt. And that feeling of feeling was so strong it burned at her insides, left her winded, like she’d just been rammed in the gut.

Lars. Just thinking the name was dangerous.

Because. If she was completely and totally honest with herself…

Ahriman might have been the official color of her life during the years of her adventure, but.

But Ahriman had always been something so big and incomprehensible. When she’d thought of him she’d always felt panic well up inside her. And she’d used that fear to goad herself onwards, it was true. That ever-present formless, shapeless dread reminded her of what she was fighting for many times when she needed to be reminded.

But.

But when they were hiking through the North in the middle of the winter and the biggest blizzard of the season, and it was not just freezing but deathly cold, and she had already lost all the feeling in her extremities and found herself wondering if a healing spell could grow back fingers that fell off from frostbite (stupid question, when a cassea leaf could bring you back from the dead, she had thought over and over and never quite been able to convince herself)…

Or when it was the middle of the day in the dessert- that time of day when not a single living thing was about except for the scorpions and the moronic adventurers aka yours truly, when she was able to watch a drop of water leak onto the sand and the damp spot had already evaporated before her brain had gotten around to processing the word “drop”, and she felt like she was being cooked alive and all they would find would be her crispy little corpse, Rhen a la something-or-other…

When she hadn’t eaten a real meal in a week or had a shower in a month and the monsters kept on coming and coming, when she was covered in mud and dirt and slime and guts-

At those times, Ahriman had become a vague figment of the imagination, lost in the endless misery of right now. Who cared about saving the world? Couldn’t someone else do it?

And yet she’d gritted her teeth and borne it.

Because.

Because he had always been there, keeping up with her, and if she quit that meant she’d lost. The world could burn in hell for a thousand years, all existence could end as she knew it, none of these seemed as horrible as the thought of giving up and proving him right.

Oh, Ahriman’s specter had haunted her nightmares, it was true, but it was Lars’s smirk that had galvanized her in her waking hours.

That that was the relationship between them was something she had never consciously acknowledged to herself. But that was what it had been. If she thought about it, really, more than Dameon or Danny ever did, it was always Lars who suffused every moment of her life.

Lars had become that familiar presence you barely noticed, an anchoring point you relied on without thinking. She’d thought she’d come to Veldarah because it felt most natural to her, and he’d been an unfortunate side result. But maybe that wasn’t true, maybe, subconsciously- she remembered, suddenly, being able to hear his voice saying every snarky mental comment she made to herself that entire month leading up to the wedding. And now…

And now.

Stupid Neya. It was all her fault. And it did not comfort Rhen at all to know Neya would be delighted to hear that.

What was she supposed to do about this? She thought, miserably burrowing her head into her pillow.

For the millionth time that evening she felt the heat suffuse her face as she remembered what she had nearly said. What she had been all of one syllable away from saying. What she had barely prevented at the very last moment from slipping out of her mouth.

That close, and she would have told him she loved him, would have looked up at his- oh, what was the use of denying it now?- stupidly attractive face and said that really if she was honest it had been a long, long time since it had been Dameon she had loved, and in that time somewhere, somehow, Lars had slipped into that position instead, as if he’d been there all along.

*screams with excitement* awesome awesome AWESOME! especially the last part. oooooh, i love this story SO MUCH! please update soon!

RHEN FINALLY ADMITTED TO LIKING LARS!!!!!! Whooo-hoo!!!!!!! *does a happy dance in the school's computer lab and receives odd looks from other people*

I totally feel soo bad writing my craack-ship fic now, just because my true and honest OTP is Lars/Rhen. I still don't know what to do with the Lars in my story at this point, because let's face it, (my) Agas is a tough competition .

Wooohooo! The confession of the century happened! Write on write on!

P.S.: All she has to do now is tell it to Lars!

Wow! Rhen!
This turned that how much Rhen'd love him!
It's Lars who has been the ONE and, oh she admitted it!
and the next is, what about lars?
Great update!!

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O_O
ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG! She totally did it! YAY! When it comes to stories like these I love Rhen and Lars too much XD XD XD I am so happy right now! You totally made my day Blurble! I loved that last para and that Last line! <3 <3 <3 Amazing job! You writers really know how to do it! XD Please update soon! I want to know what Lars is thinking! <3 <3 <3

Thanks everyone. I was really excited to post this chapter.

Although now, um, I'm a little bit nervous. I feel as if I built up expectations I'm not confident I can...

Whatever. I'll keep posting and we'll just...

*hides in embarrassment*

Blurb, you're not as bad as I am. I built up more expectation that what I think I can pull off.

oh, come on! i'd be more than happy to read anything you write! you're just so...amazing PLEASE get the next update up soon!

that was beautiful! monster guts and all! *crys*