TDP: Chapter two: Tainted Flames

Aero and company reach the border of Tiberoa. Dart suggests that they make a stop at the Twin Castles in Fletz so that they can talk with the now Queen of Tiberoa, Lisa, Aero's Aunt, and perhaps be pointed in the right direction. Before heading to the castle, they run into Luanna in the streets, one of the sacred sisters of Mille Seseau, who is currently staying in the castle as a guest. Dart asks why, but Luanna refuses to say anything about it. Upon entering the castle, they are greeted kindly. Aero, Dart, and the others speak with the queen, who tell them that they just missed the three winglies. They tried to convince her that her neighboring countries, Serdio and Mille Seseau, were planning to attack Fletz, and that she needed to up her military funding, offering her dirty money in which to do so. After denying them and making them leave, the leader stated that she'd regret treating them with such disrespect. Dart asks Lisa to use her powers of Astrology to find out where they were, but Lisa refuses, saying she attempted to do so earlier, and it nearly killed her due to the mental and magical protections surrounding all three of them. She did point them in the direction of the Valley of Corrupted Gravity. Aero and company head out to search for the Sons of Mayfil there.

On the way, they cut through the green mountains, a place which was once a wasteland, but has now been made green thanks to Nello's experiments with plantlife. Dart has a flashback about his previous adventures.

Aero and the others cut through the green mountains and head for the Valley. They find the gate shut tight and the guards killed. Aero and Dart work together to force the gate open, to find that the entire valley had been emptied off it's gravitational field, and that all that was left was a giant pile of rocks, forming a mountain. Suddenly, a red colored Virage bursts it's way out of the mountain and attacks Aero and the others, and a battle ensues. After fighting the beast, Aero transforms into a dragoon to deliver the finishing blow, but when he does, his armor begins to change. His normally red dragoon armor turns into a dark crimson color, and his powers begin to grow and change. With this new dragoon form, Aero slices the monster down in one shot. After reverting back to normal, Aero expresses his frustration that they were unable to find the winglies, and that all they found was a dead end. They decide to return to Fletz to rest and regroup.

Upon returning to the green mountains, they find that the entire area is ablaze. The grass and trees that once populated this luch area was now set on fire. Aero and the others run through the burning fields quickly to get back to the Twin Castles, fearing the worst.

Exiting the burned down fields, they head towards Fletz, and they suddenly hear a a loud ear piercing noise coming from the sky. Adalant points out three glowing red specks in the sky. "It's them!" Aero calls out.

Grey holds out his Mayfil Sword and it glows a black crimson color, and becomes something that resembles a lute, or some kind of demonic musical instrument. Grey strums the lute, and thousands of wiggling and pulsating evil spirits fly out of the instrument and down at Fletz. they begin to fly around the town and the castle. Aero and the others hear screams coming from the town, and run to it, but arrive at the gates too late. Before they could enter the town or do anything, Fletz is consumed in darkness. The skies above the city become red and black, and the company can hear moans coming from the houses. Aero tries to go in to see if anyone survived, but Dart stops him, telling him that it's too late and that there was nothing they could have done, since they didn't know enough about Grey's powers. As they turn back and leave the haunted city, Claire turns and points to a ship sailing away in the distance. "It's the Queen Fury!" Dart exclaims. He tells them that they are probably headed for Donau, the Flower city, and the company head that way.

Aero and the others head to Donau, where the Queen fury has been docked. At the mayor's house, they meet up with Lisa and Luanna. Lisa explains that Luanna had sensed an extremely dark entity heading for the castle and foresaw the annihilation of Fletz, and that Liza evacuated as many people as she could from the city, but many fell victim to the attack, including most of the Twin Castle Knights, who stayed to protect the city and to escort civilians to safety. Dart convinces Luanna to explain her presence at Fletz. She explains that vast conspiricy occured when Queen Theresa mysteriously passed away, and the crown was granted to a new queen, Isabelle. This queen demoted sacred sister Wink from her status in the castle and forced her to live outside Demingrad's walls as punishment for having a child, and because Luanna had openly defended her, she was politically forced to leave the castle. Dart asked about Miranda, but Luanna began to tear up and all she would say was that Miranda supported Wink as well, and that she decided to stay, even though she was pressured to leave the castle as well.

Aero and the others decide to look for new leads. As they attempt to leave the flower city, they, and the residents of the city, are attacked by swarms of fell beasts resembling that of the Twin Castle Knights. Aero and the others repel them out of the city, but tension begins to grow as the team now must fear Fletz' infliction spreading to Donau and other surrounding villages. Aero makes the decision to go to the haunted town and somehow break the curse upon it.

As they leave Donau and enter the scorched valley, they encounter a man with platinum blonde hair. An arguement sprouts and the man engages in battle with the dragoons. Before the battle becomes too rough, another man inturrupts it. This man introduces himself as Wilhem, a noble Knight of Demingrad, and that his friend's name is Marcus. Wilhem asks them if they may join their party as allies to fight. Aero is reluctant, knowing that Demingrad may turn out to be an enemy and that this might be a trap, but after Wilhem shows them his Silver Dragoon spirit, Dart accepts them into their group, stating that they may need the Silver Dragoon's healing power to break the curse that has fallen upon Fletz.

The dragoons now enter the cursed city, Fletz, in an attempt to break the curse. They battle through seemingly hordes of cursed knights. At the entrance to the castle, Marcus and Dart stay behind while Aero and the others enter the twin Castle. There is some sort of seal protecting the throne room, so the dragoons go to the top of each tower to battle against a zombified creature on each tower to break the seal so that they may enter the throne room. At the throne, they encounter what appears to be King Zoir, Aero's grandfather. Aero attempts to engage in conversation with Zoir, but the king reveals that he is unhappy with the current state of the world and that he will destroy all the other kingdoms until his reigns supreme. Zoir turns into an enormous black Virage, and a deadly battle ensues. After a long fight, Aero relies on his new darkfire dragoon's power to defeat the ghastly virage, and as it dies, the castle begins to collapse. Aero and the others barely manage to escape. As they leave the city, they find that the red and black clouds over Fletz begins to lift and the air returns to normal, but the castle, and most of the buildings, have been demolished. Aero swears revenge on the Sons of Mayfil, who are responsible for everything that has happened thus far.

Meanwhile, Dart and the others begin to worry about Aero and his new dragoon power. Rocland takes particular notice at how Aero's personality is begining to change, more specifically his anger level.

The dragoons return to Donau. A man runs into them and tells them that the Queen Liza has been kidnapped and taken to an island outside of Endiness. Dart leads everyone to the Queen Fury, but the boat has dissapeared. With no way to cross the ocean, the party begins to lose morale. While Marcus goes out to investigate the whereabouts of the ship, Wilhem gets more acquainted with the other dragoons. This is when Dart learns of Miranda's mysterious illness and passing. They also learn more about the egnimatic Marcus through Wilhem, who explains that he is Wink's forbidden child, and that it is rather obvious that he his half wingly, considering his ability to fly and his exceptional fighting skills. Dart puts two and two together in his head and figures out he's probably Lloyd's son.

Suddenly, the Queen Fury returns, heavily battlescarred and docks at Donau. Dart and the others rush to the ship to find it's captain, Puler, mortally wounded. Puler explains that he could not wait for the Dragoons to return and set out to rescue the queen. His conquest ended in a miserable failure, and it left him fatally injured and the ship barely fit to sail back to Tiberoa. As he dies, he declares the now grown up Kayla as the new captain of the Queen Fury.

After this sad goodbye, the dragoons meet up with Marcus, who scolds Aero for being a poor leader and tells him that if he had left some of his dragoons behind to protect Liza, this tragedy could have been avoided. Marcus flies off in anger, despite Wilhem trying to stop him. Aero is furious with Marcus, and his anger is amplified by the Darkflame dragoon. However, the dragoons learn from the crewmembers of the ship that it was Marcus, who flew in just in time to help the ship evacuate, who ended up saving the Queen Fury and its crew from total demise.

As the Queen Fury is being repaired, the now Captain Kayla tells Aero and the others that the Sons of Mayfil are holding the Queen Lisa for ransom and are demanding Aero's dragoon spirit. This, coupled with Aero's new Dragoon powers, starts to create a circle of distrust among the Dragoons. That night, Aero once again hears the voice in his head from back when he first encountered the Sons of Mayfil. The voice was uttering random things about the Virage Embryo, the will of Soa, and the right to judge all species. Aero begins to have a nightmare of his body being turned to stone and wakes up startled.

The next day, the Dragoons set out for the unknown island in search for the captive queen.

The Queen Fury sails over night to get to the island where Queen Lisa is being held captive by the Sons of Mayfil. Aero dreams about a mysterious winged figure consuming his body, telling him to become king, and to use his power to become a god. Aero awakens, startled and confused, his dragoon spirit glowing an eerie bloody red glow, which slowly subsided as he awakened. Now unable to sleep, Aero goes out on deck to see if anyone else is awake.

On deck, he sees Dart, who is staring out into the sea. After breaking his consentration, Aero and Dart talk about many things. Dart shares his concern about not only Aero's dragoon spirit, but also his own, the Divine Dragoon spirit, and how it's gotten more and more difficult to use. Dart warns Aero never to let the power of the dragoons consume his humanity, like it has done to so many others in the past.

Just as the dawn begins to break, a crewmember informs Dart and Aero that they are rapidly approaching the island. Aero and Dart search throughout the ship and either awaken or gather the other party members to go out to the island. However, Marcus does not seem to be anywhere.

On the island, they encounter a huge battle scarred virage originally responsible for wrecking the Queen fury the first time around. Aero and the others do battle with the virage, kill it, and move on.

After traversing through the dungeon like area, Aero and the others encounter the Sons of Mayfil yet again. This time, Grey and one of the other cloaked members grab Aero and start performing some kind of spell on him. The others try to save him, but are cut off by the third member, who removes his cloak and introduces himself as "Doro." With Dart as the leader, the dragoons engage Doro in battle. Meanwhile, Zene comes into contact with the being possessing Aero's dragoon spirit. After some hidden interrogation, Zene lets go of Aero, and Grey attempts to steal the dragoon spirit, but Aero swipes him away, transforming into the darkflame dragoon, but this time, the armor is thicker, spikier, and covering his entire body, his face being engulfed by a masked helmet with dragon horns. Grey and Zene retreat, Grey stating that they are "Going to Demingrad, their home away from home..." while Doro stays to finish off the rest of the dragoons.

Meanwhile, Marcus had left the queen fury to do some soul searching, feeling that his expectations of the dragoons, the heroes with the power to defy fate, had not been met. However, sensing a massive dragonic energy coming from the island, he flew back as fast as he could.

Doro is struck down by the dragoons, and then Aero begins to attack them. The dragoons are afraid that they may have to kill Aero, and Rocland refuses and insists that there must be another way. In the end, Dart rushes in, knocks the darkfire dragoon's weapons away, grabs it's chest, and pulls the dragoon spirit off of Aero's body. Aero is left unconscious.

Doro, still weak from the first fight, begins to attack again. At this point, Marcus returns to help the team. Doro fires a charged arrow shot at Marcus, using up the last of his strength in the process and killing himself, Wilhem jumps in the way, and is fatally wounded. Before his death, Wilhem makes Marcus promise to save Queen Isabelle, who he believes is being manipulated by the Sons of Mayfil. Wilhem dies, and Marcus takes the silver dragoon spirit, which does not recognise him for now, as it knows that Marcus does not yet have the intention of keeping Wilhem's promise.

Aero wakes up the next day in Donau. He makes the announcement to his teammates that he is leaving the Dragoons, as his dragoon spirit is no longer safe to use. Dart makes the suggestion that he go to the Wingly City in Ulara, and that Charle Frahma may be able to help him. Aero opts to go alone, saying that the dragoons need to persue the Sons of Mayfil and stop their schemes. Dart is elected by the remaining dragoons as the active leader, and Marcus joins them. As Aero leaves for Ulara, Rocland chases him down, absolutely refusing to let him go alone, and the two go together to Ulara to see if they can fix his dragoon spirit.

~End of Chapter 2

Links
Chapter 1

Chapter 2 You are on this one.

Chapter 3

Chapter 4