“What... what the hell happened...!?”

Raphael opens his eyes as he lays in the middle of a wasteland of destroyed trees. He can barely remember anything that had happened. All he can remember is that he was being chased and then he lost consciousness.

Raphael pulls himself to his feet and is about to look around the area when suddenly a stark, stinging pain shoots through his head. He grabs a hold of his temples and waves his head around as he attempts to push the pain away while closing his eyes as tight as he possibly can.

Suddenly, as the pain persists, Raphael sees within his mind a vision. A vision of himself, years in the future, with the wings of an angel, flying through the air with a sword of light the length of his body, slicing apart winged demons as he flies majestically through the air with a battle raging beneath him at ground level. Then suddenly, the vision ends. Godly word's ring in his head as he opens his eye's again. “Awaken, guardian.” they speak.

Suddenly, the explanation of the demonic voice and the other voice behind it become stunningly clear to him. It was a warning of what was going to happen to him. It was sort of a message from the Key and heaven, but why it was a demon screech, he still doesn't know....

As he stares down at June, who is laying in the epicenter of the destroyed area against a single standing tree, everything starts to come back to him. He thinks “I was running with her in my arms while I was being chased by those Demu people. We got surrounded and I placed June on the ground. She found out that I was the guardian and then, and then... there was this white light and... then I... passed out...?”

Raphael stares down at his two hands as they suddenly start to heat up for an unknown reason. Then he has another vision. This time it is of him lifting an iron pipe with his mind and flinging it across some room that he has never been in and impaling it into an enemy's head. The vision is gone as soon as it is finished, but yet, Raphael isn't exactly sure what he is supposed to do to make this happen.

He looks around the area that he is in and notices that there are black ninja-garbed men all around the destroyed terrain who are now just awakening from the earlier blast. One rises, then another, until the entire group has regained consciousness.

The first one to rise rushes toward Raphael while letting out a garbled, feral scream and drawing out a deep black, serrated blade.

Raphael, knowing of the new ability that he has just gained, thinks quickly. He points his hand toward the tree above him and focuses on one of the thinner branches. As he goes forward with his telekinesis, he starts to realize what he needs to do. He pulls his hand back when he knows for sure that his mind is centered and rips the branch clean off of the tree. The branch flies toward him and lands cleanly in his hand.

Raphael was planning on throwing the broken branch like a javelin into the Demu's head, but by this time the Demu is only a few feet away from him. Raphael, now reacting on impulse, swings the branch in front of him in an attempt to block the incoming strike.

The Demu's blade cleaves halfway through Raphael's branch and somehow gets lodged inside of it. Raphael pulls his branch and the Demu's blade to his left and smashes the Demu with his right elbow square into it's chest.

While the Demu reels back in pain, it is able to pull it's blade out of Raphael's branch. Raphael holds up his branch ready to fight the Demu, but as soon as he pulls his weapon to eye level he sees that the Demu's blade has cleaved the branch he has in half and gravity has now forced half the branch to hang limp.

Now the Demu is rushing at him again, but this time with another Demu closing in close behind. Raphael is defenseless with only a small stick left to defend himself with, but not even those odds can defeat the Guardian.

Raphael ducks the first Demu's blade as it swings by where his head was and springs his body up to smash the Demu in his chin using the top of his head.

As the Demu reels back, Raphael uses the time he has just acquired to brake off part of the branch and throw part of it at the approaching Demu like a javelin, skewering it through it's left shoulder and making it drop it's weapon from the injury.

By now, the first Demu has regained itself and is at Raphael again. It stabs forward directly at the center of Raphael's chest, but Raphael is faster. Raphael turns to the right and side-steps the strike. He grabs the Demu's arm as it goes by and pulls the Demu in close and headbutts him as hard as he can. He let's go of the Demu's arm for a second to do a low, sweep kick with his left leg, catching both of the Demu's legs with a single sweep and pulling them out from underneath it, sending the Demu down to the ground. While Raphael's left leg is still suspended in the air, he sends his other leg into the air and does a professional elbow drop onto the Demu as it falls, caving in it's chest and killing it.

At this point, half the Demu that were left from the earlier explosion are now on their feet and rushing towards Raphael.

While they are rushing towards him, Raphael's head begins to sting with pain again, but this time he can't hunker down and wait for the pain to stop. If he did that, then this swarm of enemies are sure to kill him. He shakes his head quickly as he attempts to push the pain away and reaches downward through the pain to grab a hold of the dead Demu's blade.

The process of Raphael becoming the guardian is slow, but progressive. If he wasn't being forced to go to battle, then the transition from human to guardian would be a lot less problematic.

The visions and the throbbing in his head is to be expected as he gains his powers, but he isn't supposed to be in the middle of a battlefield during it. The full transition to guardianship would most likely take many weeks to many years, but the headaches themselves would stop within the first week as his mind slowly becomes fertile to the powers that are being bestowed upon him.

The rest of the transitioning would be mostly spent on him acquiring his many spells and different forms, which, other than some of the advanced forms, would be completely harmless and would come in the form of words being whispered in his head or a sudden understanding of how to access his forms through focusing his mind on whatever form is being presented to him.

“Come on you damn spawns, come and get... what...?”

Sherah stands with her sword risen and her back against a nearby tree, beaten and bloody from the battle that she had just participated in. Her body armor has been torn to shreds, ripped apart from the many obsidian blades that had been run across it from so many angles. She has left many dead Watcher Demu in her wake, her entire path to this point is littered with their bodies. She now lays with her back against a forest tree and is holding her blade up with her right hand, ready to face down the massive amount of Watchers that have surrounded her. The battle is lost, that she knows for sure, but at least she can believe that in her death, June has escaped.

Then, suddenly, just when she is starting to believe that all hope is lost, she sees out of the corner of her eye a light so blinding that it seems as if the sun has just landed on earth. Sherah has no idea what this light is, but the Demu do. All the Demu that are surrounding Sherah back off, as if they had some kind of new-found fear or they had no idea of what to do.

Then it hits her. Sherah thought back to what June had told her before they set off for earth, that a miracle would happen when she found the guardian, a miracle that would take whatever form that was necessary at the time. “My god... she found him... was it...” Sherah's thoughts go back to the young earthling that had ventured off with June at her request. “... that kid...?”

The Watchers, as if being commanded by a higher order, all run away from Sherah towards where the light is coming from, only to be blown backwards a moment later by a gigantic blast that rocks the entire forest.

Sherah flings her armored left arm in front of her face to shield herself from the blast, but a large tree branch gets ripped off from the shock wave and collides with her arm, sending her to the ground with a thud. All of a sudden, Sherah feels tired, but she doesn't know why. She attempts with all her might to push herself up from the ground and to her feet, but her weariness is too great. Her eye's dull, her body collapses, and she stares at the trees above as she slowly drifts to sleep.

Sherah let's out a grunt as she opens her eyes, letting in the terrain as she awakens. She rubs her eyes vigorously as she sits up from the earthen ground. “What happened...?” she speaks to herself as she looks around the area with weak eyes. She has no idea how long she has been asleep, but she definitely feels like she has been asleep for quite a long time.

Then it all comes rushing back to her. Her eyes flash as her mind jolts back to June and the earlier blast. “June!!! Dammit, you better be alright!” Sherah leaps to her feet and rushes toward where her memory tells her that the earlier light had come from.

She runs through the forest as fast as she can. The forest flies by her as she notices other Watcher Demu running through the surrounding forest in the same direction she is going. “They must be going to where the light had come from.” she thinks . “Either they have decided that I'm less of a target or... she really did find him...!” Sherah quickens her pace, rushing by tree after tree while seeing more and more Demu appearing throughout the woods, going the same exact way she is.

Eventually, Sherah bursts out of the woods and arrives in a large clearing. There are felled trees everywhere, except for at the epicenter where a single tree stands, leaving a clear area in the middle.

At the center of the second-made clearing stands Raphael, dual-wielding watcher blades and tearing apart any Demu that gets close. June sits behind him unconscious, laying against the only tree in the clearing. She is radiating some kind of holy light and shivering, like as if her body is being changed from the inside out. Raphael is in a mad fury. Any Demu that gets within his radius is immediately cut down.

Sherah has no concern over Raphael at the moment, she is only concerned for June, who is seemingly going through some kind of transformation.

“June!!” screams Sherah as she rushes over top of the felled trees and through the clearing to June's side.

As Sherah comes closer to June and Raphael, she starts to realize exactly how Raphael has changed. Before he was awakened, he was fearful and unknowing, but now he is exactly the opposite of that. He has some kind of unbridled fury within his eyes. He is in an uncontrollable frenzy, whether that is because June is in danger or just plain an unadulterated anger towards the Demu, Sherah never finds out.

More Demu are coming and they are approaching from all sides. Sherah knows, as she comes to June's side, that they are going to have to escape. There is no way that Raphael, even if he is the guardian, would be able to face the odds that are to come if they decide to stay.

Raphael acknowledges that Sherah has come up behind him and pays her no mind. He knows in his heart that Sherah is good, just another perk of being the Guardian.

Another Watcher Demu, with it's blade risen high, comes up to Raphael's side. He swings up his arm to block the attack, summoning up a hexagonal azure barrier out of thin air in front of his arm to block the dark blade, ricocheting it backward with a single thrust from his arm. The Demu stumbles as it tries to regain it's footing, but to no avail as Raphael pushes his other fist towards him and let's out a telekinetic blast that launches the Demu away into the felled trees.

Sherah lays stunned at what she has just seen, no race in recorded history has had that kind of ability. She let's her jaw drop only for a few seconds, immediately placing her attention back to June. “Oh June, what the hell's happening to you....” she mutters before June starts to shake uncontrollably. “Shit, she's convulsing.... Raphael, we need to get her out of here! Can you lead us back to your house!?”

Raphael looks back and gives Sherah a stern nod. He points in a single direction while stabbing a watcher through it's blade arm with his other hand as it came down with a swing, forcing it to drop it's weapon to the ground. Raphael then knees the Demu in the gut and throws his other blade into the Demu's neck as it bends down from the kick, killing it instantly.

Raphael screams “Follow me!” as he runs toward the direction that he pointed out moments ago. Sherah is on her heels with June in her arms a second later, following close behind him as he tears apart any Demu that dares to get close.

Right as Raphael runs within the borders of the standing trees, his head starts to throb horribly. Something is unlocking inside him, but he has no time to stop and rest, he is being chased and he needs to continue moving. He tries shaking off the pain but it persists like before, the only thing that Raphael can do is continue forward and wait for it to pass by and deliver it's new power to him.

As he runs through the forest, a vision appears in his head. It is there and gone in a second, leaving behind it the mystical words 'Utnuel Huenatilea Opwinntel' with the cringing pain in his head disappearing as the word's end.

He stops in his tracks and mutters the words under his breath, with two orbs of light appearing in his hand as he speaks the last word. As he looks at these orbs, his memory jogs, reminding him of exactly what he had envisioned moments ago. He screams back behind him to Sherah, telling her to shield her eyes as he clamps his shut and slaps his hands together, releasing a massive blast of light from his hands that emanates throughout the entire neighborhood, the light itself enough to blind any of those close enough to witness it first hand.

But that is not what this power is. This power is a spell that blasts forward into the world the light of heaven for but a split second. The light is not for blinding. If someone witnesses this light, then they are put into an immediate sleep that would last for just an hour. A perfect means for a quick escape.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

As the blast emanates throughout the forest, June's eye's flash open. She let's out a horrific scream as the blinding light flashes and dims, her scream lowering as the flash slowly disintegrates. Her voice lowers, her eyes grow weak, and she slowly and peacefully falls back into a tired sleep.

As Raphael's heaven flash spell dims out and disperses, so does the light that had enveloped June, the lights both seemingly pulled away by each other. Whatever had been happening to June is now over and dealt with, although no one at the time knows that.

As Raphael and Sherah open their eyes, they notice that the forest that had been bustling with Demu forces moments ago has now gone utterly quiet with not a single creature stirring a leaf. Sherah looks at Raphael in confusion over what had just happened, begging for an answer with her eyes.

Raphael catches her eyes and understands her bewilderment. He shrugs his shoulders and exclaims. “I don't know Sherah, I just don't know....”

“But you're the Guardian! You have to have some kind of level of understanding to do whatever you just did!” Sherah's gaze drifts from Raphael down to June's unconscious body. “And what about June!? Whatever was happening to her may have passed, but I still have no idea what the hell happened back there... or what the hell's going on right now!”

Raphael let's out a sigh before spinning around in a half-circle and motioning to Sherah to follow as he begins to walk calmly through the woods. “As I said before Sherah, I don't know, but June might. From what I have already figured out, she came here for me. I don't have any idea what's happening to me or June but I'm starting to gain a small level of understanding. I don't know what I did a second ago, but I think it made all of those Demu people disappear or it knocked them all out or something like that. Either way, they're not coming after us anymore. We need to bring June to my house and out of the open if anymore Demu are still around. We'll figure out what to do after that.”

As confused as Sherah may have been, she knows that Raphael has the right idea. They need to get June to safety. She is out in the open, unconscious, and possibly still surrounded by Demu. Sherah let's out a grunt that is half out of agreement and half out of unknowing confusion.

Raphael is beginning to get ahead of her even though he is walking at a slow pace, so Sherah pushes herself with June in her hands to move more quickly, gaining speed on Raphael and eventually walking next to Raphael at his exact pace.

Within a few seconds of walking, the group finds out exactly what has happened to the Demu that were chasing them earlier. All the Demu are now asleep on the ground, snoring horrendously from a defect that Raphael guesses is from birth, but Sherah knows that he is wrong.

“You're not completely right about that.” she corrects him.

“Why's that?” Raphael asks.

“I'll tell you when the UMA comes to pick us up.”

Raphael's head is filled with bewilderment as Sherah moves ahead of him. He remembers seeing that on her key-card earlier, but who exactly are these people? He stares after her as she walks while asking her “What?”, but she does not respond, she simply let's out a slight chuckle and continues into the woods. “Wait Sherah, who are the UMA? Are they who you work for? Hey, wait up!” Raphael sprints past the sleeping creatures and catches up with Sherah, walking side by side with her once more.

They reach Raphael's backyard fence quite quickly after seeing the sleeping Demu. Raphael orders Sherah to stand back while he makes an opening. Sherah watches as Raphael pulls his right palm back and then throws it forward, letting out a kinetic push that blasts a human-sized hole through the fence for them to walk through.

After Sherah goes through the hole into Raphael's yard, she starts to realize exactly where the level of earth's technology is at. The yard is well-trimmed, revealing that his civilization has already created a competent and effective grass-cutting tool or machine. From the amount of trees that she sees populating the yard and what used to be a garden located at the western portion of the yard, Sherah is able to make out that Raphael's family must be mindful of the wilderness and his civilization most likely understands that plant's give off oxygen, which is necessary for breathing and fueling the human body. His house itself looks old, but advanced, using insulation, wood, and outer paneling as the blocks for the building, and that is only from what she can make out from the outside.

As far as Sherah can tell, Raphael's race is advanced enough to maintain an easy life on earth, but has not come close enough for it to be ready for space travel or the colonization of vacant planets.

Raphael opens his sliding glass den door and gestures for Sherah to come in first. She thanks him properly and walks into the house with Raphael following close behind, him shutting the door as he enters.

Raphael's den is a small, but convenient place to have in the house. There are no doors in the rectangular room, save the backyard door. The only way that someone can tell that there is a divide between the den and the living room or kitchen is a slight difference in the carpeting and flooring.

The walls of the den are painted a darkened white, almost tan color that makes the room glow at anytime of the day. On the left portion of the room from where Sherah had entered, facing to the side of the backyard door is a stone fireplace that was most likely created along with the house with a stone flooring underneath that stands separate from the white carpeted floor.

Facing directly away from the back door is a hand-painted painting of a beach with a lighthouse in the distance that takes up half the size of the wall. Underneath of the painting is a glass table with a porcelain base that supports a similarly-styled porcelain lamp along with many other trinkets. On both sides of the table are two green, quilted recliner chairs that have seen better days.

Directly across from one of the recliners is an older TV compared to the newer flat-screen TVs that have come out recently that Raphael's family cannot afford. To the forward right area of the den is the entrance ways to the kitchen and the living room, but as said earlier, those are just entrance ways with no kind of door to close off the area.

Raphael walks ahead of Sherah and goes through the entrance way to the living room. As he goes through the entrance way, he motions with his hand for Sherah to follow and says “You can place her on the couch.” and points to the couch on the other side of the living room.

As Sherah enters the room, she is slightly befuddled by it. It is made in the shape of a square, but there is a slant in it that goes from the second story of the house down to the first story that leads from the direction that the den is down to the other end of the room. In the middle of the slant is a glass pane that works as the room's sun roof, although it doesn't take up a lot of the roof area.

Across the room at the far wall where there are a series of three glass windows that look out into the front yard is a sofa that is made in exactly the same fashion as the den chairs. Over near the stairway that leads to the second floor are two standard chairs that are again made like the den chairs, they are placed against the wall that is positioned next to the stairs. Against the wall that divides the den and the living room is a large 42 inch TV that Raphael's dad owns and uses regularly.

Every wall in the living room has some type of furniture placed against it. Against the wall that faces opposite of the stairs and to the right of the TV is a two-seat sofa that has tables placed to each of it's sides with random trinkets placed atop both of them. The sofa is also styled the same way as all of the other furniture.”They must have some kind of theme going on here....” Sherah thinks as she walks over to the couch and places June carefully on it's cushions.

“Raphael, I know that you have some questions right now, but they're going to have to wait. Right now, we have to make sure that June recovers correctly and we need to get in touch with the UMA, but that probably isn't going to be a problem, since there was a ship assigned to follow us before we were attacked and subsequently crashed on your planet.” Sherah says as she checks on June's earlier injury and any further external problems from whatever had happened earlier in the forest.

She lifts herself up a moment later and looks at Raphael with a relieved look on her face. “It doesn't look like she took any further injuries. Hell, I think her sprained ankle may have already healed up, but we can't take any chances. She's going to need a blanket, some food and water, and we're probably going to need a weapon or two. Do you have any of that?”

“Well...” says Raphael as he considers the weapon question. “there's some blankets in the closet by the stairs and there's food in the kitchen, but I don't think we have any weapons in the house....”

“Alright,” speaks Sherah, who then remembers that Raphael had Watcher blades earlier, but then remembers that he dropped them when activated that spell. She looks over to the kitchen. “go get June a blanket while I scrounge up some food for when she wakes up. As for the weapons... well, we're going to have to improvise.”after Sherah finishes speaking her orders, she walks past Raphael into the kitchen and leaves him to go about his work.

Raphael walks over and pulls a quilted blanket out of the closet that is located in between the front door and the stairs and walks wearily over to June. His memory about what exactly had happened earlier is slowly coming back to him. He remembers everything that had happened up to when Sherah left June in his care almost as soon as he had woken up in the newly-made clearing, but what had happened afterward was just barely a blur past the rough details.

Raphael's eyes flash as he remembers exactly what June had said to him before he was knocked unconscious. “Raph, she called me Raph.” speaks Raphael under his breath. “Nobody has called me Raph since I moved here.” Raphael slowly and fearfully places the blue quilted blanket over top of June's body and tucks the corners around her sides. “How did she know that? Who is she?”

Seeing as Sherah is still out of the room preparing food, Raphael decides that he should take a closer look at this mysterious space girl.

She looks human enough, with a white complexion and all the normal human body parts, but she has that same animated look that Sherah and the pilot have.”Apparently all of the aliens look like this.” he thinks. She was a tall girl, but she looks like she is very young, most likely around Raphael's age. Her hair is a sky blue color that shines exquisitely in the afternoon sunlight. Because she is asleep, Raphael decides that it isn't a good idea to look at her eye color, for fear of waking her.

Raphael stands up from his stooping position and looks back toward the kitchen. At this time, Sherah is walking into view and is holding a plate with some lasagna along with a fork in one hand and a kitchen knife in her other hand. “This should be enough to hold June over, but the weapon problem is still a big issue. Do you have any idea where your family could have hidden a gun or something?”

“Well, I don't... I don't know... may... be...!” Raphael grabs his head another time, his brain pulsating as if it is his heart. He sinks to the ground as his mind becomes numb from pain. He grunts and squeals in agony as his mind blasts in such pain that it feels as if it is melting inside of his head. Sherah places everything that she has hurriedly on a nearby table and rushes over to Raphael. “Raphael! What's wrong!? Say something dammit!?”

Raphael throws up one of his hands with his palm outward towards Sherah and says. “I'll be... fine.... I'm just.... learning something new....”

Sherah stops in her tracks and looks at Raphael with concern in her eyes. “ 'Learning something new?' What is that supposed to mean?! You look like you're in pain!”

Before Raphael can answer Sherah, a sudden phrase flashes through his head, two words that not only were a spell, but a meaningful statement that spoke to his heart.... “Fighting... Soul....”

As soon as the phrase finishes, the piercing pain that had enveloped Raphael's brain vanishes in an instant. Raphael's eyes open in a flash as soon as the pain ceases. He looks up towards Sherah and says “It's gone....”

Sherah looks at him with question in her eyes as her concern for the current situation steadily increases. “What? What's gone?”

Raphael raises himself to his feet and pats his shirt momentarily before walking across the room to the coffee table where Sherah had placed the things she was previously holding. “Sorry Sherah, I'm still learning this as I go, but I do know that when my head starts to hurt, I'm learning something new.” Raphael grabs a hold of the kitchen knife that had been placed on the coffee table and holds it out in front of him horizontally. “Just like this....” Raphael closes his eyes and slowly says the words that he had heard just moments ago under his breathe.

The air in the room shifts towards the knife as a glowing light slowly takes hold of it and levitates it up into the air, the light is so bright that it completely blots out the shape of the knife. The light grows horizontally and eventually forms into a three and a half foot light that no one can see through or into. Suddenly, all the air that is being circulated toward the light is blasted away as the light itself disperses in a quick flash.

The knife then slowly floats back down into Raphael's hands, it can barely be misconstrued as a kitchen knife, or a knife at all for that matter, any longer.

The previous stainless steel blade has now been replaced with a razor sharp sword edge with a serrated back blade. The blade itself has a layering of black steel fused onto it's sides with the blade being sharpened between the three layers of steel. The blade comes up into a point at the top, an extremely sharp point that can pierce through any kind of low-grade armor. The hilt is made out of the same plastic material that the knife's handle is made out of, but it is much thicker with a metal holder in the inside of the hilt separating the unrefined steel portion of the blade from the rest of the hilt and keeping it firmly held in place. The guard is in the shape of a circle and is adorned with a very exotic design, with small air holes pocketing around the guard. The pommel is a well-designed, steel metal point that could easily cave in an enemies skull with a single thrust.

Raphael grabs the blade out of the air and examines it in his hand. Sherah is ecstatic about what she has just seen. She speaks her mind quickly. “What... but that's not possible...! The soul fighters have been extinct for thousands of years...! But yet... you're....”

“As I said before Sherah, I don't know what's going on, so don't even ask me how I'm doing this.”

“No, Raphael, you don't understand! The soul fighters were wiped out by the Nes. Demu a very long time ago. None of them survived, I know that for sure, but yet you're using their only unique ability, the power to draw out the fighting soul of a weapon and turn anything into a weapon more formidable than it could ever have been before!”

“Well, do you have any ideas?”

“I don't know Raphael, I just don't know,” Sherah turns to a resting June and let's out a sigh. “but she probably does....”

Almost as if awakened by Sherah casting a worried look on her, June's eye's open and she begins to mumble to herself as she looks around the room. “Where am I...?” she speaks as she lifts herself up to gaze upon where she has been taken to.

Raphael looks towards her and is able to so her eye color. She has red eyes, deep blood red, ruby eyes. Sherah moves closer to June. “June, you're in the Guardian's house. He took us here after you fell unconscious.” Sherah leans in close to deliver a message that only she and June can hear, making sure that Raphael cannot hear her. “Listen, I know that you were trying to keep quiet about this on the ride here, but I have no idea what's happening here and if you don't tell me everything, then I can't defend you correctly.” Sherah nudges her head in Raphael's direction and then continues to speak. “but don't tell me here, tell me when we get on Lendlock's ship.”

June doesn't respond to Sherah, she simply looks over top of Sherah's shoulder and over at the boy that is standing across the room, holding a sword in his hand and examining it. “Raph!!” she yells out to him, making him flinch and drop the sword to the ground.

“So I didn't just imagine it, she did call me Raph....” thinks Raphael. Raphael walks over to June while saying “How do you know that my nickname is Raph?”

“I don't know,” speaks June while smiling back at a mystified Raphael. “it just came naturally, but I do know that the Guardian is a human from your planet who's named Raphael H. Danteo, which would be you.”

“Wait,” says Raphael as Sherah backs away to give Raphael and June a little space. “How exactly do you know that and what did you do to me earlier?”

“God told me, and I made you the Guardian, silly.” June let's out a small chuckle at the end of her statement.

“God told you, huh.” says Raphael. He thinks deeply for a second before speaking again. “Whelp, it wouldn't be the first weird thing to happen to me today, but ya know what, whatever. Oh, and by the way, you guys can call me whatever you want, it doesn't bother me at all.”

“Raphael, Raph, whatever.” says Sherah as she grabs the lasagna from the other side of the room and gives it to June. “Just make sure that you know your priorities.”

The group falls into a light silence. Sherah sits next to June as she eats and Raphael sits on the two-seat sofa, waiting for whatever is going to happen next.

The silence is suddenly broken when June realizes something. “Wait, where's the rest of the ship's crew?”

Sherah, speaking calmly and clearly without a crack in her voice, says. “We had to leave them behind, there's nothing we can do for them now.”

“No!” June snaps “There is always hope, there is always going to be a chance that they are alive. Miyra, Chiot, Huro, they're all my friends and I refuse to admit that they are a lost cause. If I give up on them, it's the same as me giving up hope for my mother and sister. We need to get back to the ship and make sure that they are-”

“June!” Sherah snaps back. “The Demu have completely infested the forest. There's no telling how many of them are left even after Raphael became the Guardian. The amount of them that are out there is too high for even him to take on in his current state. There's nothing left that we can do for them, this is what happens in war....” Sherah's topaz eyes suddenly shift, a flush of emotional pain spreading out across her face. “What happens... in war....”