Crystal did nothing, simply raising her hands to her face and looking at them questioningly.
Nixon gave chase instantly, bounding across the grassy meadow to the thing, closing the gap just enough to grab hold of its arm before it leaped off again.
The force of its leap coupled with Nixon’s iron grip caused it to tear its own arm off as a child would an insect wing. The reaction from the Herald was exactly what Aryu remembered from before. The robotic, twisted scream that followed as it landed with an awkward ‘thud’ only a few paces away was pitch for pitch the same as the one from Tan Torna Qu-ay. Right down to the length of the sound.
Nixon was on it instantly, mighty sword in hand and ready to finish this bold creature before it could cause any more damage. “WAIT!” shouted Crystal, startling Aryu with her volume. “Wait, Nixon!”
Nixon held off, bringing the blade to a stop just before he would have connected with the machine’s non-face. He turned to her, eyes blazing in fury, with a look of both rage and total confusion. He was not accustomed to being stopped.
Crystal ignored him and immediately approached the fallen robot. “What have you done to me?” she asked, to Aryu’s extreme confusion. “What did you do!”
The thing, fallen and at the mercy of the three most powerful beings alive, could only begin to laugh, a terrifying sound coming from a mechanical body with no mouth or face to speak of. “We evened the odds, Crystal Kokuou. Look about you. Your mighty Power is failing as we speak!” The laughter continued unstopped as the four looked at what it was referring to.
Aryu saw the disorientating image of the world around him as it became hazy, like opening his eyes underwater. In a matter of seconds, the startling beauty of the meadow in the foothills was replaced with a bland collection of rocks and scrub grasses, still ringed by trees, but in a circle far less impressive to look at. To the right of where they all stood Aryu could barely make out the image of a large, circular rock wall, now crumbled and aged. It appeared to be the base of what was once a very large and impressive building that was likely the aforementioned tower Crystal had once lived in.
Crystal was back to looking at the thing on the ground, her red eyes demanding a more direct answer to her previous question, rage and fear written across every inch of her face.
The laughter stopped like a switch had been turned off, sharp and abrupt. “As I said, humans even as powerful as you are at their core the same. Elements and electrical impulses. Our solution is a simple one. We have injected you with a solution designed to impede the signals of your brain that have command of the ability to access the deeper natural order of the universe. I have turned off the part of the brain that allows you to tap the Power. You are as you once were. Frail, weak and ready to be destroyed.”
“TURN ME BACK!” Aryu jumped back at the level of emotion Crystal displayed. She was beyond enraged. She was on another level of emotion altogether, and it was terrifying to see.
“Don’t be foolish; why would they send me, knowing you were obviously going to trap or destroy me, with anything useful to reverse the process?” The laughter started again, followed by the immediate dispatching of the Herald by Nixon, who believed he had waited long enough as it was. His sword came down with a force that not only divided their unwanted guest but also drove the blade into the ground below where it was resting, making the earth shake with the force. The laughter stopped.
That was when Crystal began screaming at the top of her lungs, arms thrust upwards as she did so, madness etched into her eyes.
-----------------------
Aryu could barely stand it. The madness into which Crystal had apparently descended was terrifying and deep. Sho, a look of both confusion and worry in his eyes, seemed to collect himself enough to usher Aryu over to the crumbled rock wall and allow them both to take a seat while Nixon tended to Crystal, trying to calm her as best he could.
The dizzying queasiness Aryu felt was still there, but each fresh wretch brought nothing, his stomach empty after the second round.
Sho brought Aryu an old cup filled with water from the stream. The stream was still there, flowing as peacefully as before, but everything else had changed all around them, and a sudden feeling of helplessness and desperation was in the air.
Aryu drank the cold water, the shiver of the drink on him at once.
“Is it true?” he asked after a moment. “Have you lost the command of the Power?”
Sho nodded. “So it would seem. That thing dropped from the sky and ambushed me before I could react, doing to me what it did to my mother in the process just before I made it here. Then it followed as I tried to battle into the Haven. I can’t feel anything around me like I could before. The life of this place escapes me.”
“What about the trees and animals? Don’t you maintain it? Why hasn’t it begun to disappear like the Haven did?”
“I keep the peace here with a mixture of my own abilities and the natural essence of the planet. As time has gone on, the Earth maintains more and more of the order of things here,
