Chapter 67 Fruitless Attempts

Time spent in the village, accomplishing little. On evening by the fire with the villagers, Kyuskay and Miara discovered a bottle of vodka, which was more to their taste than the villagers' poor beer. That night, the chaos of the Crystal unravelled the hut down on our heads.

In the driving sown, in the dark, in the rubble all around and over us, I healed everyone, one at a time. Peter's prayers to Shallia are indeed able to aid me, and I learned another trick from him. He can marshall the power of Shallia and recover his own energy, naturally, much faster than I could. I watched him, and reached deeply into myself, and discovered ths secret. Between my new ability to recover from the effort healing takes and Peter's ability to restore my energy through Shallia, I am so much more effective in caring for this group under my protection. I hope to be able to teach some of these abilities to other Biancan healers when I finally can found my own hospice. Should I live to see the end of the Crystal, that will be my next task. But for now, the Crystal must be destroyed, and this group that must destroy it is mine to keep alive and healthy.

While I was busy, others put together a make-shift shelter to shield us from the blizzard for the rest of the night. We slept a bit late, and all were well again in the morning. Except for Peter, who was wracked with pain. I asked if there was anything I could do for him, but he said no. He mumbled something about Shallia, but nothing I could hear clearly. He obviously wanted to be left alone, so I did so.

Somewhere between the chaos and the licquor last night, Pippo was beatn. José was following him, out into the snow, Sun said. Miara immediately said she would follow him, and the rest of us agreed. He will need healing at the least.

We followed Ashe through the blizzard, and we eventually found José alseep, clinging for dear life to a tree. He had lost Pippo's trail. Ashe tried to follow Pippos's trail, but eventually had to admit he lost it.

Whiel slogging through the snow, Goldrim kept trying to think of a way out of our dilemma, and he was rewarded by several visions. One was of Pippo leading a well-armed groupd of people into the village. We decided, since that was yet to happen, that Pippo would be all right and would return to the village on his own, and so we could return as well. The other visions were, I think, answers from the Crystal itself, and therefore suspect. But it gave us all an idea, at least, which we decided to try out.

We four holders of the four Crystals, plus Miara, went back out into the wilderness. I, as the holder of Air, Ashe representing Fire, José for water, and Goldrim for Earth. We set ourselves up opposing, I against Goldrim, and José against Ashe. Miara stood just outside the four-cornered circle, and she placed the Crystal, floating under its own power, in the middle of us.

Miara used the protective rune that Goldrim had seen to create a circle of protection around us of swirling winds. The rest of us concentrated all our power into the Crystal. We hoped that by sending it balanced power, we could overwhelm it.

We were not well-balanced, however. Goldrim, the least experienced of us in using the Crystal, wavered often. And José collapsed early, simply too exhausted to continue. Miara stepped into his place. But we just couldn't hold out long enough. We all collapsed into the snow eventually, having failed.