Requiem Run

Chapter 12

The room had gone silent at my declaration. Everyone was looking at me wide-eyed, until Tarja shot up from her chair at the speed of light, nearly knocking Rhys and the table over as she did so, and pulled me into a hug.

"You are the hero this country's been waiting for all along," said Tarja, "Riley Newman, you're like the second Oktu himself!"

"Uh, who?" I croaked, "Tarja, you're choking me!"

Tarja let go of me, still clutching my hands in her own, smiling.

"Oktu is the legendary Wyvern that destroyed the Essence Cleanser and brought in the Second Era," said Rhys, who had been watching the two of us from the table with a smile on her face, "It's a legendary story Tarja used to read..."

Rhys stopped talking and looked down at the table, almost like she was embarrassed by something. I was still trying to process the words that had come out of her mouth, since none of them made any sense to me.

"You do mean it, right Riley?" Tarja asked, "You'll end all of this? You'll save them?"

Tarja's voice moved me. She sounded so much like a kid begging their parent to buy something for them. The hope in her voice was so much for me, it was as if she was fuelling my own determination.

"I promise you, Tarja," I said, "I'll make sure we end this horrible game, and we'll free the Runners from the possession gems! I promise!"

"That's the spirit!" said Katie, "I don't know how much help I can be, but I'll do what I can!"

"You went from 'unsure' to 'determined' pretty quickly," said Rhys, "But hey, I'm cool with it. We're gonna make Xeastea history!"

"So, we know where the temples are," I said, motioning to the map Tarja had left on the table, "We have the map so we know how to get to them, we know we're getting choices of weapons, Felice and use me as a puppet to fight these guys. What else do we need to know?"

"It's not that simple," said Tarja, "Taking the gems off is one thing - the problem is keeping them off."

"Huh?" said Katie, "What, there's no cool-down timing before they can be put back under?"

"Uh, no, I think," said Tarja, "The gems could just be re-attached... unless..."

Tarja's eyes closed, like she was thinking hard, then she went wide-eyed and looked at me.

"Soul-binding! That's it!" the elf yelled, causing me to lean back a little as she suddenly seemed overjoyed.

"What's it?" I asked, "Soul binding? Like what Felice and I can do?"

"No, no!" said Tarja, "Soul-binding is a... well, it's an outlawed spell, but it might work here. The spell binds a person's free will to the life force of the caster, which also grants immunity from other control spells or objects, like the gems!"

"I can only imagine why something like that is outlawed." Katie said, "So if we get the gems off these guys chests - bearing in mind they might not have these gems on them at all - we cast this spell, and they can never get possessed again?"

"That's right," said Tarja, "Which means they'll be saved!"

"I guess we know what's happening now," said Katie, "Tomorrow, we're gonna end all of this crap!"

The finer details of the plan were something we couldn't really focus on - the Runners were too unpredictable to plan out their every move - but the idea was there, and that was what we needed; Katie and I needed to get to the five temples in the regions of the island and wash our faces in the fountains within. Once we did all of them, we returned to the arena where we first started, and that was it, we were allowed to go back to our world.