Discerning eyes will note that the prologue was, 
actually, a major portion of this chapter. I'm not 
sure why I did that (it was four months ago, after
all)
but as I've put this story thru three major revisions
since the original post to the ffml-r, I asked Mr. 
Tatum if I could repost them myself, to which he 
graciously agreed.

I don't own the characters of Ifurita, Katsuhiko, 
Nanami, Fujisawa-sensei, or Makoto (that would be 
Pioneer etc), but I do enjoy their world, which is why

I decided to write this. Read, or don't read, it's 
immaterial to me; I've written this solely for myself 
and someone else. Who? Read and find out.



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-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: elhaz1.txt
-- Desc: elhaz1.txt

	Amidst the thousand legends of El-Hazard, the tale of the 
Sleeping Guardian is often recounted; not on its own, but as an ending 
to a long epic of love and hatred, retribution and redemption. The 
Sleeping Guardian exists, forever unchanging, reminding all of heroes 
long dead and places that are dust. 

	The Sleeping Guardian waits, ready to battle any threat to all 
El-Hazard. Anyone, from venerable king to peasant child, can Awaken the 
Guardian, but only at a terrible risk. Of the five times the Guardian 
has been Awakened, twice has the Guardian destroyed those foolish 
enough to call without sufficient reason. This ensures that the 
Guardian is approached only in truly dire peril, which is what she 
prefers.

	You see, she would much rather live in her dreams, her 
memories, and the world she has created within them, than deal with the 
pain of the present...

EL-HAZARD
THE FINAL NIGHT
WORLD OF ENDINGS PROMISED
PART ONE


"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and 
deeds left undone."
 -Harriet Beecher Stowe




	"Grandmother?"

	Something, some note, some quaver in my adoptive granddaughter's 
voice tells me the dream I am in now. I struggle, writhe, fight my 
hardest to get free, but to no avail: Like all my true memories that 
come when I'm dreaming, I am constrained to live it as it happened. And 
this is the one memory that I refuse to remove, no matter how horrible 
it is. 

	Already I feel the memory taking over, dragging me along...

	"Yes?" I said cheerily. Distracted by the final stages of 
planning for tonight's state dinner, I didn't look up from my list of 
names and placesettings until Maki sat down in the chair next to mine. 

	When I did look up, I saw the tears streaking down her face. I 
reached out and took her in my arms. "What's wrong?"

	Maki wrapped her arms around me, and for one unconfortable 
second I was reminded of Alliele, her genetic grandmother. That 
comparison washed away in the wake of her words. "It's Fujisawa-sensei, 
Grandmother. He's come back. And he's dying."

	For a second I sat, unbelieving, then my tears mingled with 
hers. 

				****

	The young woman stood outside the entrance to the cave, slowly 
working up the courage to enter. She had no doubt that the Sleeping 
Guardian would think the invasion a threat to all El-Hazard, and yet...

	The Safiry Dragon had been the reason for her last Awakening. 
After taking one look, the Guardian had destroyed her Awakener and said 
four words: "Not worth my time." The Guardian had gone back to sleep, 
and the Dragon had gone on to ravage a whole province before being 
killed. 

	The second time she'd been Awakened, she'd killed a king and 
all his advisors for daring to bring her into a war between two states. 
Her words then were: "I care not for anything but all El-Hazard."

	The young woman tried to remember the details of the three 
times that the Guardian had saved El-Hazard - when the Phantom Tribe 
had tried to conquer the surface world and almost succeeded, when 
Tritoch, the being for which the Guardian was only a prototype, had 
appeared, and when the Worldeaters had come - but somehow, looking into 
the mouth of a cave where Death slept, it was hard to remember that
without Death there could be no life.

	The young woman shook her head. "I've come this far," she 
declared, "I'm _not_ gonna back down now." With that, she pulled on her 
Earthshaker Gauntlet (she knew it wouldn't do her a lick of good if the 
Guardian so much as got cranky, much less tried to kill her, but Elmesi 
warriors never die without a fight) and resolutely strode into the 
cavern.

	After a few steps, her eyes adapted to the luminescence shed by 
the wall carvings. It was all done in the true ancient style, as 
befitted the Guardian's origins, but somehow she'd been expecting the 
walls to be decorated in the Old Floristican style, because that was 
when so many of the Guardian's tales took place.

	As the carvings picked up her body heat, they began to glow 
brighter, until the young woman could actually read what was written on 
the walls. After glancing over a few words, she shrugged. It was only a 
retelling of the Wanderer's Tale, but probably more accurate than any 
version she'd heard. She was a historian only by hobby, though, so she 
stopped reading reluctantly and continued on.

	After wandering through the geometric corridors for perhaps 
half an hour, she came to a simple door set into the wall. The young 
woman read the inscription on it aloud while tracing it with one 
finger. "Behind this door sleeps the Demon God Ifurita. Open at your 
own risk."

	Swallowing one final time, she reached out one hand to the 
door. _This is it._ The door swung silently open at her prompt.

	The room behind it smelled of the century that had passed since 
the door had last been opened. The circular floor swelled upward in the
center, rising in a slight slope that made the room look somehow...
organic, as though it were a womb. The spiderlike etchings all over the 
wall only added to that, giving an alien cast to the room.

	 The young woman stepped through, walking up the slight rise 
until she reached the top of the rounded floor. Despite expecting it, 
she still almost fell into the hole at the very top. She looked down as 
she caught herself and gasped. There lay the Guardian. 

	Having only seen ancient pictures and artist's renditions, the 
young woman was unprepared for the Guardian's porcelain beauty. Gray 
curls lay in disarray across a face the young woman thought could 
easily belong to a Demon God; it was cold and dispassionate, a face 
that could kill humans with no more qualms than stomping ants.

	The young woman pledged to herself that she'd never stomp an 
ant again.

	The Guardian held her legendary staff in a loose grip. The 
young woman was about to reach down and pull it forth, to begin the 
ritual, when movement drew her eyes back to that face. It was 
scrunching up, giving the Guardian a pained expression, and... tears 
were trickling down her cheeks?

	The young woman's heart went out to the Guardian for the first 
time. Not all the legends about the Guardian's origins, not all the 
illustrations of her tragic fate, could convey the grief that watching 
someone cry in their sleep could.

	Moving quickly, the young woman removed the staff gently from 
the Guardian's hands and inserted it into the socket at the head of the 
Guardian's resting place. She wound it three times, just as the ritual 
proscribed. Each time, the Key turned with greater and greater 
difficulty. Finally, after the third turn, the key almost sprang from 
her hands and the entire room came alive, the air crackling with 
energy. 

	The young jumped back as the Guardian levitated from horizontal 
to vertical. As her feet touched the ground, her eyes opened and she 
staggered slightly. The young woman looked into the Guardian's eyes and 
was shocked to see recognition in them. The Guardian stepped forward 
and said softly, "Shayla-Shayla?"

	The young woman was careful to move slowly as she pointed to 
herself. "My name is Karylis, Ifurita." Again making no sudden 
movements, Karylis offered the Key. "Do you wish to have your staff?"

	Ifurita, after staring at it for a moment, stretched out her 
hand and grasped the offered weapon. Electricity leapt one final time 
around the contact point and in the globes of the staff, then died 
down. She nodded. "What have I been awakened for?"

	"Guardian," Karylis intoned formally, "El-Hazard has need of 
you."

				****

	Looking at this child, this physical reincarnation of my old 
friend, I almost wept again. My memories, they hurt so much while I'm 
awake...

	Instead, I leveled the staff at the girl. Though the Power Key 
Staff was no longer necessary to utilize my full power, it was... 
comfortable. "Explain this threat to me." I knew I sounded cold and 
compassionless, because the girl's... Karylis's... face paled beneath 
her tan. That didn't stop her from sounding calm and professional as 
she spoke.

	"An army from another dimension has invaded El-Hazard. Though 
their weapons are, in some ways, inferior to ours, they come at us in 
such numbers that it wouldn't matter if all they were armed with was 
pointed sticks." This last was spoken with such bitter sarcasm that it 
convinced me she was related to Shayla somehow. "Also, many of their 
warriors are augmented with machines implanted into their bodies."

	She rummaged in a pouch for a moment, then produced a simple 
datachip. "I don't know if this is advanced enough for you to interface 
with, but..."

	I returned the staff to a ready position and took the chip from 
between her fingers. Reaching into it, I...

	...held on like a drowning person to my grandchild as sobs 
wracked my body. "Are you sure he's dying?" I asked when we'd both 
calmed down enough to talk. Even mentioning his possible fate 
threatened to send me into a fresh spate of tears. 

	"That's what the Doctor said."

	I stood up and wiped my eyes hastily. "Where is he?"

	Maki looked up at me and sniffed. "I-in his usual room. But..."

	Ignoring whatever she was going to say, I moved quickly, nearly 
ripping the door from the frame in my haste. Running through the halls 
with such speed that I frightened many of the servants, I skidded to a 
halt nearly seventeen seconds later in front of a rather plain door, 
for Floristica at any rate. Fujisawa had insisted on only a simple room 
after the Queen had granted him a residence in perpetuity. 

	There were only three people in the room: the Doctor, my 
husband Makoto, and Fujisawa himself, lying on his bed. Makoto and the 
Doctor both looked up as I entered the room, and Fujisawa tried to sit 
up in his bed, collapsing backwards. 

	I ran to his bedside, using a technique gained ages ago to 
seemingly disappear from where I was and appear next to him. He smiled 
up at me weakly, and I was shocked to see how suddenly he'd changed 
since last year.

	His face had gone from that of a fit, tanned man in his 
mid-forties to that of an invalid in his eighties. His hair had 
silvered and thinned, to the point where I could see his scalp through 
it. His arms had grown thinner, almost collapsing around his bones. 

	"How ya doin', girl?"

	I couldn't muster even the ghost of a smile as I said, "Not so 
good, Masamichi. Not so good."

	Makoto grabbed my arm and dragged me slightly away from the 
bed. The Doctor followed close behind, a small tablet clutched in one 
hand. After we'd both gotten some distance from the bed, my husband 
released me and said softly, "Is it as bad as we've feared?"

	The doctor shook his head, and hope leapt into my heart for a 
moment. "Worse." My heart shattered as the doctor continued. "As we've 
discussed before, the agency which grants each of you immortality is a 
mystery. My personal theory is that it stems from the same source as 
your powers." He sighed. "I hate to be proved right in this manner, but 
it seems that Fujisawa-sensei has had his powers... revoked... and lost 
his immortality at the same time."

	We were interrupted by a rather loud shout from the bed. "No 
need to leave me outta this discussion, Doc. I know what's happenin' to 
me as well as anyone else in this room."

	We all looked at each other, then moved back towards Fujisawa's 
bedside. He coughed and said weakly, "It's not like this happened to me 
suddenly, y'know. I first started feelin' older about two weeks ago. 
That's how long it took me ta get here."

	Makoto assumed that serious look he only had whenever something 
important was at stake. "About how long do you think he has left, 
Doctor?"

	The doctor shrugged. "If it took him two weeks to get this old, 
perhaps another week? There's no way to judge if the aging is linear or 
exponential. My personal feeling is that it's exponential, but that may 
just be my pessimism speaking."

	Now I spoke. "I think... I may be able to find a solution."

	Makoto and the doctor both looked at me in surprise. "What do 
you mean?"

	"There was a library that contained all the information ever 
discovered or created on medicine in my time. I never knew what was in 
it, but once I was called to defend it. It was one of the few times 
that my masters allowed me to use any means necessary to defeat my 
foes." I stayed silent for a moment, then continued. "Early on in my 
life, they were afraid that if I used my full powers I would find some 
way to break free. I don't know if there's anything useful in the 
library's computer, and I doubt that it's still intact, but it may be 
his only hope."

	"Where is this library?"

	I sighed. "To the best of my recollection, near the center of 
where Jinnai holds power over the Bugrom. I suppose I will have to 
visit him and request permission to look for it." I still hated Jinnai 
for being my last master, but the force of it had mellowed over the 
years, making it at least possible to speak to him civilly.

	Makoto smiled warmly at me, and that made me feel that talking 
to Jinnai would be worth it. That smile still had the power to melt me, 
even after over fifty years of marriage. "Thank you for considering 
Jinnai's feelings, Ifurita."

	Fujisawa shook his head. "Kids these days..."

				****

	Karylis felt a tingle start at her fingertips as the Guardian 
took the chip. Fearing a backlash of some kind, she snatched her hand 
away and started waiting. 

	And waiting.

	She squeezed in a bit more waiting after that. 

	Having nothing better to do, she waited a bit more. 

	Finally, sick of waiting, she decided to practice for a bit. 

	Elmesi warriors train constantly, not only with their bodies, 
minds, and conventional weapons, but with a special item given to each 
warrior at his or her graduation. The design for each one dates back to 
antiquity, and are not, for the most part, fully understood, so each 
warrior finds their own method of getting the most out of their 
weapons. 

	Karylis had chosen a rarely-used weapon at her own graduation. 
The Earthshaker Gauntlet could generate or disperse gravity fields 
around the user while leaving that user unaffected... if she wished it. 
While this could have simple, quite brutal applications (a 50-g jab to 
the jaw, for example) mastering it took nearly twice as long as any 
other weapon used by the Elmesi. Which was why she'd chosen it, 
naturally.

	Right now, she was trying to figure out how to create such
an intense area of gravity that it would draw everything nearby into a 
super-dense ball. It was hard keeping control of the field, though.
Feed it too little energy, and it would barely nudge anyone nearby.
If she gave too much energy, though, it could start feeding itself
in a never-ending chain reaction. Theoretically. It probably wouldn't
destroy more than a few square miles...

	It was all starting to drive her nuts, but she hadn't graduated 
third in her class because she quit when it got hard. She'd graduated 
third because one of the people ranked behind her at the time had 
tripped her in a foot race, breaking her ankle, and...

	Karylis dismissed her memories of the past with a swift shake 
of her head before it broke her concentration. She focused, and the
gravity field formed perhaps ten feet above the floor. The air 
shimmered, and light itself was drawn in, swirling and wavering like 
golden hair spreading in a calm pool. She felt a wave of exultation 
threaten her focus as she kept the field from disturbing a single tile 
on the floor.

	"An interesting technique."

	As her concentration broke, Karylis watched in horror as the
field spread, then, she gathered her focus and dispelled it. Glaring 
over at the Guardian, forgetting for the moment that she had enough 
power to outfight every Elmesi warrior at once while yawning in 
boredom, Karylis shouted, "Do you have any idea how hard it is for me 
to do that?!"

	The Guardian had no expression, but Karylis had the nagging
feeling that there was a half-smile lurking somewhere under the 
surface. "Of course, but you _are_ doing it the hard way." She assumed 
a cold, almost robot-like expression and said, "I have assimilated the 
data, and my preliminary judgement is that this is serious enough to 
warrant my presence. I reserve full judgement until we are actually in 
the field."

	Indignity forgotten, Karylis practically sprang for the door. 
"Really? Then we'd better go, right away! I'll take you to the Elmesi 
headquarters."

	The Guardian nodded. "Of course."

	As they left, the Guardian cast a wistful glance back at her 
bed. Karylis watched her with compassion in her eyes. _Was it really so 
bad?_ she wanted to ask, but didn't know how her new companion would 
respond. 

				****

	I stared into the dancing flames, thinking. No doubt the girl 
(Karylis, that was her name) wondered not only why I had insisted we 
stop for the night, but why I'd bothered lighting a fire on this warm 
spring night. The truth was, I needed to do some thinking, and fires 
are wonderful things to think about. Helpful tool and uncontrollable 
weapon, fire embodied almost everything created by man, myself 
included. The first way humanity had of throwing back the darkness, man 
still used it millennia after safer ways of cooking food, lighting 
homes, and warming oneself were developed. 

	Perhaps, fire embodied man's obsession with destroying himself. 

	I had never really thought anything about fire except as a 
terror weapon, until I'd taken a camping trip with Makoto on our 
twentieth anniversary and had a conversation while staring up at the 
stars...

	I shook myself mentally. I needed to figure out why interfacing 
with that datachip had thrown me back into the dream I'd been having 
before I was disturbed. The other times I'd been awakened, I'd had 
dreams interrupted, but of course they'd never been _this_ one. Perhaps 
because it was _this_ one?

	Even now, I could feel it clawing at my consciousness, trying 
to drag me back. I took a stronger hold on my self-control, lest I...

	...lest I drag Makoto into the bedroom and say goodbye to him 
there. As much as I wanted to, I knew we didn't have time for that. 

	Fujisawa didn't have time for that.

	Instead, I kissed him chastely on the cheek. Even that brief 
contact was enough to send a blizzard of impressions from his mind to 
mine. I whispered in his ear, "Please be here when I come back."

	Makoto smiled indulgently. "Of course I will. What, do you 
think I'm going on a fishing trip?"

	"I just have this feeling..."

	He pinched my bottom, making me jump. "Women's intuition?"

	I glared at him and said mock-angrily, "Just because I was made 
instead of born doesn't make me any less female."

	He just grinned and said, "I think I just proved that." Then, 
his face grew solemn. "Go, quickly, and return to me, my love."

	"As if I were the wind, my dear Makoto." I leapt out the window 
and sped away.

	I knew the main problem would not be getting to where the 
library once was, and I had few doubts about its survival. The problem 
would be the sheer volume of information contained in the archives.

	If I had to search it all, it would take me at least six days. 

	Fortunately, though, I had parameters to my search that would 
narrow the time to just one or two days. That meant I would have plenty 
of time to find anything that might be able to help Masamichi.

	What could possibly go wrong?

				****

	"I don't feel very comfortable..." 

	Karylis had wanted to fly for as long as she could remember. 
Having no affinity for manipulating Air, however, meant that she'd had 
to make do with pale substitutes until the moment that the Guardian had 
looked back at her and said, "We will fly." The Guardian had grabbed 
her hand and started flying before they were even out of the cave.

	One thing that Karylis hadn't included in her dreams of soaring
effortlessly through the air was getting sick doing it. She only kept 
her breakfast through grim determination and iron will. 

	"If it is where you told me, than we are almost there."

	Discomfort forgotten in wonder, Karylis looked down at the 
ground. _What took me two weeks to skim, she flew over in less than two 
days..._

	"One thing I do not understand is..."

	"Yes?" Karylis turned her attention back to the Guardian.

	"Why did they send you out alone? All of the previous 
petitioners were accompanied by entourages."

	Karylis felt tears threaten at this sudden reminder. She 
scrubbed at her eyes with the hand that wasn't holding onto the 
Guardian's. _Never show weakness!_ "I... I wasn't alone."

	"Oh." The Guardian seemed to consider that for a moment, then 
offered, "I'm sorry."

	Somehow, having the sympathies of a being that had so much 
power and yet suffered so much made Karylis feel better. She said, 
"Don't be sorry. After all, it isn't anything like what you've been 
through."

	Suddenly, the Guardian halted, and Karylis's temporarily 
forgotten stomach caught up with a vengeance. "What makes your tragedy 
any less than mine?" Then, she continued on. 

	As they moved closer and closer to the Elmesi Academies, 
Karylis's vague feeling of unease grew. She put it down to motion 
sickness, until they came within sight of the Academies...

	Karylis gasped.
	
	The buildings where she'd learned, destroyed. The trees under 
which she'd studied, charcoal skeletons. The green fields she'd played 
and practiced on, razed. The walkways, once busy with people, empty,
the stones themselves torn from the ground and strewn carelessly about.

	The Guardian landed gently, but Karylis didn't stay on her feet 
for long. After falling to her knees, she looked around in shock. "What 
happened..."

	Ifurita leaned wearily on her Power Key Staff and said grimly, 
"It seems I was called too late..."

	Around them, ash stirred and danced in the stiff morning 
breeze.




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