Xenoblade Chronicles

Chapter 6- Sword and Shield

The two Homs were walking through tephra cave, just like they were only yesterday. Except one painfully obvious difference was creeping it's way to the forefront of Shulk's mind, something he simply couldn't ignore: they were one Homs down. He and Reyn simply weren't a complete team without Fiora.

Cringing, Shulk moved the thought to the back of his head, desperate to think of something else. Thankfully, Reyn distracted him by saying "hey, you think we'll be able to take out these monsters more easily now that we have the monado?" Shulk didn't see why that would make a difference, and said "not sure, I don't even know for certain that the monado will work on normal creatures. After all, it can't hurt Homs." Reyn slumped his shoulders and said "oh, right. Well, we still need to find out. I'm itchin' for a fight anyways."

But this time, as they walked through the previously-explored mag mell ruins, there were hardly any signs of monsters. The occasional vang flew past them, but even they didn't seem like they wanted to fight. Soon, they reached the intersection with the automatic doors, but Shulk noticed something different: the one that was red before was now green, like the other two. "Hey, look," he said, approaching the door and letting it open, "it works now." Reyn rammed his fist into his hand with a grin and said "well, great! Saves me the trouble of knocking it down." As they continued down this new hallway, Shulk began to wonder what would have happened if that door was operational yesterday. And, of course, his mind wandered to whether or not Fiora would have still been alive. "Damn it! Find something else to think about!," Shulk thought to himself, clenching his fists as he walked silently.

He was surprised when the tunnel opened up to the upper level of a large room with a small lake in the middle. While Shulk had only been as far as the mag mell ruins, Reyn, being part of the defense force, had explored deeper parts of the cave during occasional missions. The platform they were standing on sloped down towards the lake on the left side, and the slope appeared to lead to all sorts of different tunnels and rooms leading outward, as if this one room was some kind of central location. And somehow, as he stared at the lake in the middle, he felt vaguely dreadful. "Hey, Reyn," he asked "is this that lake you've talked about before?" Reyn had told him all about different places in tephra cave. "Yep," said Reyn "and that up there's the heavenly window. I've heard a tolkikos lives up there." Shulk had heard of tolkikos, a kind of ancient, Phoenix-like bird that was extremely rare, from Dunban.

Reyn continued "but if you think that's cool, wait till you see what's up ahead." Shulk grinned at his best friend's attitude, already forgetting the sadness from minutes ago. "Well, lead the way," said Shulk, allowing Reyn to walk in front of him. The taller Homs walked down the slope, passing a few of the tunnels in the walls as they passed by them. He stopped at one of the tunnels near the bottom and entered it, Shulk tailing him. But as they followed the long pathway, Reyn suddenly stopped. "Um, hold on, I don't think this is the right way," he said reluctantly. Suddenly, an arachno dropped from the ceiling, hissing and drooling onto the floor. It's gigantic fangs glistened in the low light, and it stood up to its full height to look intimidating. However, this attempt failed, as the monster was only tall enough to reach the Homs' knees.

Shulk had always thought that these little monsters were particularly annoying, from their hissing to how surprisingly fast they could move. However, as he drew the monado, he thanked the Bionis that there was only one; arachnos almost always attacked in groups. As it made a predictable lunging attack in an attempt to bite Shulk, he swung the monado down, swatting it down to the floor. It struggled beneath the blade of light, but as Shulk focused on pressing down, the blade pierced through the spider-monster's skin and cut its body clean in half, leaving scorch marks on the corpse as the blade instantly cauterized the dead creature's injury. Shulk then allowed the monado's blade to dissipate before placing it neatly on his back. As he did this, Reyn said "huh. So it does work on things besides mechon." Shulk realized this, and he was curious as he asked "well, why not Homs then?"