Rune continued.  "Your companions from Earth.  The three
priestesses as well, if they are willing to forego returning to
their sanctuary for a while longer."

	"Oh, you know, all the main characters. I'll throw in some
red-shirts in case there's trouble."



     Here was the moment.  Lord Gallus, who he loved as he loved

no one else, had said something to him once.  You must never love
anything so much that you will not betray it.

    He had not understood it then.
    
    "No, I do not."
    
    Heart-Slayer paused a few steps from Nahato, and then began 
to back away.  The flakes of stone upon the floor were drawn to 
him again, and became his skin.  He stepped back into the wall.
The debris of the fallen stones vanished.

	Nice scene. Very nice scene.

    "We're too weak to fight another war of conquest," Jinnai
mused.  "And a guerilla war isn't my style.  We definitely need
some sort of weapon to tilt the scales in our favour.  Got any 
more Demon-Gods buried somewhere?"

	Yech. Unbidden visions of the 2nd OVA series. Granted, a scene like
this was pretty much inevitable anyway.

    He had meant it mostly as a joke, but Deva nodded seriously.
"Yes, I suppose."  A note of bitterness entered her voice.  "The
Demon-God and myself are sisters of a sort.  We are both products
of the Great Holy Wars."

	Now that's a good plot twist.

    "God's will be done," Jinnai said.  Frankly, he didn't know
for certain if God existed or not.  But if He did, He was quite 
definitely on Katsuhiko Jinnai's side.

	Hehe.

	Throughout this scene, Deva's adoration of Jinnai seems a bit too
strong, given the obvious defeat he's just been dealt. Her character always
seemed to fear him more than like him. Unless there's something going on
under the surface with her, which wouldn't surprise me.

    Somewhere along the line, Shayla had gotten a fourth cup of
wine.  "You know what the problem is?"  She banged her fist on
the table.  "Men are intimidated by women with power, that's what
it is.  They want some little tart, or someone they have to wind
up with some sort of big key, or something... they can't stand 
you being independent.  That's why we're all going to end up
bitter old maids.  Men are jerks."

	"Someone they have to wind up," indeed. A perfect line for an
inebriated Shayla.

    "Men are jerks," Shayla replied.

	Hehe.

    A rumble echoed through the ocean, and bounced off the
walls of the trench.  Fish fled in a frenzy.  The sand of the
sea-floor shook; the arm attached to the hand shot up, ripping
away plants, stirring sand into murky clouds.

    Risen from the depths of the sea, a shape with human body
shot upwards, towards air and light and the rolling waves a
thousand feet above.

    Slowly, the clouds of sand settled.  The bubbles left in the
wake of the rising disappeared.  The fish returned to the 
trench, and business resumed as usual at the bottom of the sea.

	Whoa. I just saw a 3D IMAX film of the sea floor yesterday, so this
scene was WAY too vidid for me. Freaky coincidence.


	An excellent second chapter, all round. It feels more like an
extension of the first chapter, really, which seems to set the stage for a
fairly large bit of work. Is there an end in your head?

-Patrick