"Y-Yeah." It was for the best--trying to save her now would likely just get them both killed. And when he did go, he didn't want Sarah to be even close. He was hoping that these people wouldn't associate him with anyone else, but now that they'd seen Sarah too, he was concerned for her safety.

"Umm...you might want to take the forest. Turns out in that they're looking for a Cizokian with a curved blade in Galaens. That's why we came this way to begin with. But we were ambushed..."

With Sarah going slow for the moment, he took the effort to turn Kageko back into a normal scythe once more. They needed to conserve their energy, and he wanted both his hands free. He placed her back into the holster on his back, then once slumped into Sarah's back, wrapping both his arms around her.

"Thank you, Sarah...you saved my life just now, and probably Etsu's too." Chances were they would have been killed then and there if she hadn't come when she did--even if Etsu was still in trouble, at least now he had some time to come up with something.

"Okay," she replied quietly at Eld's

Sarah started off towards the woods, at Eld's preference, leaving Etsu's naginata behind. It remained sitting upon the ground, a memory of what happened just moments earlier-- a memory to be returned in the next thirty six hours, where it sat as a marker, a spot to search for within the next twenty four hours . . .

"Ya welcome, Eld . . ." she replied at his thanks, "What kinda friend would I be if I hadn'ta gone against ya best wishes and west to Galaens after ya, anyways? I figured ya'd get into trouble. I'm just . . . sorry-- that I didn't leave sooner . . ."

Eld had time to fill her in on everything. On horseback, it was about an hour from Galaens to Hillcrest. With Sarah's riding, that reduced the time by at least a half an hour. Indeed, Eld had the time to fill Sarah in, and tell her every little detail . . .

The halls were gray, tainted by the world around them. Little color helped to brighten any of it. Arched windows lined the lengthy corridor, wide as it was, with pillars, perhaps decoratively placed, between each window, built into the structure. Along with the corridor's expansive length and width, it looked almost as if it had no ceiling, just an open expanse of darkness. Outside the windows, there was no world to see. It was gray, like a mist, colorless, yet between light and darkness.

It was there that Gestahl walked, still carrying Etsu over his shoulder, silently approaching the end of the long corridor, with the much shorter form of Toushikyo following behind with a noticeable limp. He'd taken a little more damage in the fight than he thought. A couple of the large chunks of ice he'd thrown during it weren't actually effected; he just hadn't noticed until now that they hit his leg, and it hurt terribly.

"Gestahl, what are you thinking?" Toushikyo demanded as he started after the towering man. "Negotiating with him? How do you call this a positive step?"

Gestahl did not reply. He only continued to walk.

Toushikyo limped forward quickly, until finally standing before Gestahl. Frustrated, he declared: "He will only fight you in the end. He is not the type of man to negotiate."

Gestahl stopped. He stared down to Toushikyo, his emerald eyes temporarily unfeeling, yet confident all the same. "Doubtful. He is ignorant to the truth of the Dusk Remnant. He will trade."

Toushikyo paused long enough for Gestahl to walk past him, off towards the room at the end of the corridor, the room with locks and bolts, and a small crack in the door for the sake of feeding, perhaps. Gestahl had to bend over to enter it. It was a well lit room with a barred window and an oil lantern, just in case. There was a bed at one corner, and a table next to it. Etsu was set down carefully upon this bed, with the location of the pillow corresponding her to her skull. Gestahl turned and started out, bending down to leave the room, and closing the door behind him. The latches were all shut, locks were placed, and he walked away . . .

Eld spend most of the ride explaining to Sarah what happened: arriving in Galaens, only to be informed by Davis that it wasn't Noah who killed, but that the police were looking for a Cizokian armed with a curved blade. Following Davis's advice, the headed towards Feiyan, only to be thrown off the horse then ambushed by Toushikyo. Eld managed to beat him, but Gestahl appeared, knocked Etsu out, and pounded Eld good.

"And that's about when you showed up," he finished. There was a pause before he added, somewhat sheepishly: "I'm sorry...the horse ran off. It was heading towards Hillcrest, though."

As much as she was relieved that Noah Herst wasn't killing people, she was disappointed. First and foremost, it meant she wasn't going to see Noah again, probably. And secondly, Eld wound up running into more trouble than Noah would have provided. He wasn't even prepared to deal with the foe he wound up facing.

"Goddamn . . ." she trailed off.

It was a horrid situation he was in. He wasn't going to give up Kageko, and he wasn't going to let Etsu die-- understandably so in both cases; the girls were very close friends of his. Kageko, they only knew of, but they believed Eld when he talked about her, nonetheless.

As soon as they were back in Hillcrest, Sarah had her horse slow down, and eventually come to a stop once they were out front of her house.

"Well . . . looks like ya were right, she's here," Sarah motioned towards the pasture, where a lone horse walked. She dismounted and tied her horse up out front of her house. "I'm gonna tell Em we're back. Ya wanna come with? Unless ya got hurt that bad . . ."

Silly though it was, Eld was a little relieved to see the horse back. Even with all else that had happened, he'd have felt guilty if he'd cost Sarah one of her horses--they were practically as important to her as her human friends, not to mention that even one horse accounted for no small amount of the Vaerbond's assets. Losing one would be a big loss.

"N-No, I'll be fine. Mostly, it was just the wind knocked out of me," he explained as he climbed down from the horse. He didn't mention that it had been some blood as well--that stone pillar had hit hard.

"Should we get Mayako too?" he asked. Chances are they'd want to tell her anyway, and it would save him from having to go over what happened a third time.

Fortunately, all of Sarah's horses but one knew where home was-- and that one wasn't truly her horse to begin with. Rutherford, Remmy's horse. He didn't know where home was. Or perhaps he did, but it simply wasn't the home Sarah wanted him to know. Home was probably wherever Remington Vaerbond was, and that wasn't on the Vaerbond ranch anymore.

Nonetheless, a lost horse sought its home. Here, they were comfortable and well taken care of. As they were not wild horses, they did not seek the outside world.

"Yeah-- actually . . . uh," Sarah started, but then lost he train of thought.

It was gained again once she started to think about Mayako and how she might play into all of this. It wasn't much, really, considering how Mayako was-- but she was still one of Eld's very best friends, and deserved to know what was happening.

"Meet back here, okay?" Sarah asked as she opened the door, "I'm gonna get changed, and try and grab Em. Y'know-- keep her in one place."

Eld looked at Sarah in mild confusion as she seemed about to say something, but think better of it. He shrugged--Sarah was odd like that sometimes, and he knew her well enough to know that if was something she thought he should know, she'd tell him.

He quick ran over to Mayako's house to fetch her--he didn't give her much for details, just that something was going on again and he wanted to fill everyone in. He'd learned early on that if he told one of the girls what was going on, they all expected to be told--Emma in particular was pretty miffed that she was the last to know about the Reaper business.

Leading her back to Sarah's place, he'd wait patiently where she told him to, for her to come fetch them after she'd changed and fetched Emma. It did make him kind of wonder why she needed to change, though. She'd already been dressed...

Mayako stood next to Eld, a little confused. When he went to get her, she wasn't necessarily ready to go. In fact, she wasn't all that decent, really, just wearing a towel after a nice long bath. So after a bit of embarrassment, she rushed to get dressed, before heading out with Eld, with very little information as to why he wanted her to come out with him, only that he wanted to explain something to her.

She'd thrown on a pair of long pants and a long sleeved v-neck shirt. The sun was just starting to go down and all, too-- and it was going to be cold at night, after all. She hadn't had the time to brush her hair, so it was a little bit of a mess-- but a strange sense of urgency demanded that she not care about that sort of thing!

Just a moment after they got to the front door of the Vaerbond ranch house, Sarah and Emma emerged from within. Sarah, now wearing a somewhat low cut sweater and jeans, and Emma clad in the white coat that Mai Uematsu had made for her some time ago, as a goodbye gift. It was buttoned up, so it was hard to see what else she was wearing, sans a pair of sneakers. Nonetheless, the thing was her absolute favorite article of clothing in the world. Not only was it a white coat, but it was a stylish white coat, with a hood and no sleeves and everything.

"What's so important, guys?" Emma asked immediately, "I was trying to cross-breed roses."

Prompting a question from Mayako; her attention wasn't easily diverted from things, but that was kind of interesting. "What?"

"Yeah, you know-- I have fourth generation blue roses and eighth generation white roses; I'm trying to cross-breed them to make blue tipped white roses."

"Oh. That would be really pretty!"

"I know! I tried with the last generation, too, but that didn't turn out like I--"

"Guys, shut the hell up f'a damn second!" Sarah shouted to get their attention-- immediately startling Mayako, and putting Emma off a little.

Eld had been about to interrupt when Sarah spoke; ordinarily, this would have been something he'd be interested in hearing about, though he admittedly didn't know much about flowers and the like. Now, though, there were more pressing concerns.

"Sorry, but...it really is important," he said. He stalled for a second, wondering where to begin, before deciding that relaying it all from the beginning was easiest. "It started yesterday..." And so he went through it all, this time from the very beginning, from heading to the Krigenson farm all the way to Sarah rescuing him from Gestahl and Toushikyo, and Etsu being whisked away, with the ultimatum that he had thirty-six hours to hand over Kageko before they'd kill her.

And then he simply waited--it would probably be a lot to take in, and he was sure they'd all have something to say...

Naturally, Eld got a plethora of different reactions from Mayako and Emma. They didn't know what was going on, exactly. Sarah had not informed Emma about what Eld told her earlier this afternoon. She was in for a treat-- and not a good one.

All Emma could do was fold her arms over her chest tightly, furrow her brow, and mutter words in a mixture of concern, frustration, and anger of the situations, "Goddamn . . ."

Mayako's reaction was similar, albeit less on the anger side and much more on the side of shock and genuine concern. She covered her mouth with her hands and whispered, "O-oh my God . . ."

Sarah had heard it all already, albeit broken up into two different stories, and sans a few little details that Eld threw in this time. She folded her arms over her diaphragm and nodded along with the story Eld had to tell, recalling again how kind of scared she was when she rescued Eld from certain death. But she didn't regret it, not at all-- and even if she had gotten boxed in, and she was taken out just like Eld might've been, she still would've regret nothing at all.

"Wh-what . . . what are you going to do . . .?" Mayako asked, worry evident in her voice.

"Rescue her," Eld replied without hesitation. "It's the only thing I can do." There was no way he was going to leave her to die, but handing over Kageko was equally not an option.

"But...I need some rest first. And I'm still not sure how I'm going to beat Gestahl...how do you fight someone who can use the ground against you?" he asked, meaning it to be rhetorical.

Anywhere he stepped, he could still be hit. He considered simply using Purgatory to his advantage, but they had a spiritual presence even if they didn't know about Qi, so he had a suspicion they'd still be able to see him.

Mayako glanced away, a little nervous. She didn't know, either. At least, not off the top of her head. Eld was so much better at that sort of thing, anyways. He was the one that got into battles, he was the one that did the fighting. The rest of them . . . what good were they, as far as this situation was concerned? It seemed like it'd be useless for them to even try and pick up weapons or something and go out there guns blazing by Eld's side, no matter how much someone like Sarah might want to.

"I've got an idea," Emma suddenly announced.

"Wh-what?" Mayako chimed quietly.

Emma didn't elaborate. Instead, she simply started to walk past Sarah and Eld and Mayako, simply motioning for them. "Follow me."

Eld was surprised at Emma's interjection; as she walked by, he glanced at the others, but he got the impression they had no more an idea what Emma had in mind than he did. Did she really have something that could help? It seemed unlikely, but then again she was practically a genius.

So without saying a word he followed her, figuring that at worst it would just waste a few minutes of time, and at best she would provide him with some kind of advantage he could use against Gestahl...

"Em, we've been walkin' for ten whole minutes, and ya still ain't said a word!" Sarah rebuked Emma, partially rushed, partially frustrated.

"W-we're really deep in the woods, too . . ." Mayako whispered; she had her arms folded over her chest to abate her shivering just a little.

"Give me a second," Emma replied. She took a second to shut her eyes and think, before pointing due northeast, and heading straight there.

And in the end, they'd be treated to a clearing. A wide open space that had no path leading directly to it; only memory could take a person here.

The area was littered with stones and trees, but all in a circle. All in a near perfect circle, with rhyme and reason to it. There'd be a small boulder, then a tree, a large boulder, another tree, and so on and so forth, repeating in that particular pattern, for the span of several dozen yards on end. On a few trees there hanged oil lanterns, unused for some time. Other trees appeared to be damaged; crushed in certain places, and all of the boulders seemed to be in the same state, which was perhaps even stranger than their existence there.

The clearing itself was, well, utterly clear, excepting a single large tree stump in the middle of it. It was flat and smooth. A person could practically write on it, given paper and pencil-- or an old notebook lying next to the stump, and an old pen tucked into it.

"This is where Remmy used to train himself," Emma announced to answer the unspoken questions of her comrades.

Immediately, Sarah and Mayako were surprised. Likely, Eld would be, too. He wouldn't have seen the place before, after all . . .

"W-wait, what?" Sarah shouted quietly, "No way! I've never seen this place before in my li--"

"You also never saw Remmy train . . . or even fight at all," Emma interrupted Sarah.