Kyrie awoke to the chill of the predawn air and the faint snores of his companion, Aran. He stared at Aran who had been keeping watch all night; he was sitting cross-legged, head bowed down and eyes closed in a light sleep. Trying not to disturb him, Kyrie kept silent and studied his right arm, where he could still feel a faint pounding —a sign of suppressed memories that he had experienced only ten times before in his life. Resolving to revisit these memories later.
Against one wall, Kyrie spied a cuckoo clock mounted above a broken dresser, the hands ticking away the minutes at 6:15 AM.
Kyrie pushed himself out of the ruins in which he had taken shelter for the night —an old shoe shop with its cracked walls and broken windows, now littered with shards of glass, shoes scattered on the granite floor, and snow sifting through a hole in the roof.
The morning sky was blanketed by dark clouds that allowed small patches of sunlight to peek through and cast an orange glow over Paasilinna. With no sign of Alban fliers overhead like yesterday, Kyrie ventured out onto Franklin Street, studying street signs in Finnish, Swedish, and Esperanto, he deduced his location before realizing that he had lost Völundr's map along the way –probably somewhere in Paris. He ran his fingers through his hair while muttering under his breath.
“I'm on Franklin Street… so Bello Street should be coming up next”. He scratched his chin. “I guess I’m about ten blocks away from the Galileo Museum.”
He stumbled up to the next corner, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. He scraped away at the snow with numb fingers, finally managing to grab hold of the cold metal post and heft the heavy road sign with one arm. ‘Welcome to The Commercial District.’
“The Industrial District is 600m North, Näkymatön Junä Train Station 500m South. Galileo Museum 8km Northwest.” Realization settled in him like a lead weight as he let the sign crash back to the ground; he was about 5 miles off track and running on foot from the Amahraspand was out of the question. Then he went back to the shoe shop, but this time he took a detour and went around a different road.
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Kyrie had been investigating around the shoe shop. First, he found a bakery; its door unlocked. However, there was no bread he could take.
He continued onward and as he was about to turn right to get to the shoe shop, he found something that disturbed him. A family of four: an adult couple with two children lay dead. Their frozen blood covered the snow around them. The father was missing his head, but his body covered his wife and children as a shield.
“Those beasts killed them,” Kyrie whispered, clutching his fists.
Kyrie closed his eyes and bowed in respect. He wanted to do something. However, before he could do something for the deceased family, the ground began to tremble beneath his feet.
“Aran!” Kyrie shouted. No matter how much he wanted to give the family a proper burial, he couldn’t stay any longer, so he ran.
Shards of snow and dust cascaded from the old shoe shop’s roof as Kyrie screamed Aran's name in warning.
Aran woke up in haste as he sprinted out of the shop before the roof fell over him.
In response, Aran leaped to his feet and raced out of the building before the roof collapsed on him. Just then, one of the statues appeared coming from a nearby plaza as it surged forward with a mighty roar, its weapon smashing into the pavement and splitting it in two. Wings spread wide, it hurled heavy boulders towards them.
Aran lunged forward and seized Kyrie's arm. “C'mon, let's go!”
Kyrie readied his battle metal staff and cried “Abra!” In an instant, two razor-sharp blades extended from either end of the staff.
"I'll be the bait!" Kyrie shouted. He sprinted towards the massive statue, dodging its strikes and raising his staff to block its weapon until he was kicked back and sent skidding across the ground. He groaned in pain as he came to a stop, feeling battered all over and coughing up bile in his throat.
“Avish, Unhsiv, Amharb!” Aran cast with fierce intensity, summoning three shifting figures of light into existence beside him. Avish and Unhsiv had blue-skinned bodies that were decorated with glimmering bracelets and adorned with weapons - a trident for Avish and a golden mace for Unhsiv while Amharb had red skin and four heads with grayish beards, but no weapon of its own. They were projections of Aran's mind created by Völundr's ring, though Kyrie could feel their presence, he could barely see their colorful but blurry silhouettes. Amharb crouched down so that the other two used him as a stepping stone to leap higher, punching the statue's face square on in mid-air. However, the Amahraspand didn't even flinch. So, Amharb grabbed the statue's right foot and toppled it down, before the other two beheaded it in one swift strike when it fell to the ground.
The Amahraspand instantly dissolved into a cloud of dust.