It hurt to wake up.

It was cold… far colder than anything she had experienced in the past few days.

Clarisse coughed herself awake, spitting out a mouthful of painfully sharp snow. Looking around herself, there was snow everywhere but one side, which seemed to be a stone wall rising high up in the form of a cliff. It lay over her like a heavy blanket, except one which encouraged her to escape in interest of not being crushed under it. Under herself, she found Nikolas, somehow still managing to protect by virtue of his arms around her.

Seeing him unconscious, Clarisse fell into another panic. "Aughhh- Ahh!" She groaned, one of the straps of her bag breaking and jerking her out of the way as she tried to free herself from the pile of snow.

"Nik?" She asked, but there was no response from the hybrid. "No no no- please tell me you aren't gone- " she muttered quickly, using all her strength to drag his body out from under the snow. "Nikolas!"

Still, there was no response from the red panda. His body felt cold, far too cold. Clarisse dragged him all the way towards the rock wall and propped him against it before placing a hand on his neck to check for a pulse. Her worries only heightened when she couldn't sense anything but the nearly audible beating of her own heart.

Clarisse forced herself to bolt through the pains in her body to return to the snow and dig her bag out of it, retrieving her gada from it and returning to Nikolas's side. "Come on- you have to respond to something!" she exclaimed as she shook the gada, hoping to see something, anything flash on it. Despite her attempts, the gada refused to show her a spell to cast, any form of connection to him at all.

After a few minutes of trying to coax the gada with no avail, Clarisse quietly sat down next to Nikolas, laying the weapon aside. She raised one of his hands, holding it in both of hers. There was no fire in him, none of his heat at all from before. She couldn't feel rhythm cycling between them either, he had turned into a complete void.

It began with a soft whimper, shortly after which the waterworks began rolling down Clarisse's face. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry… It's all my fault- I wanted to be someone special and I… I made so many bad decisions-" She had lowered her face into his palm and was crying profusely into it. "And now you're dead… I should have listened to you! I should have listened to Papa, and I shouldn't have ever left home…"

Clarisse sat there for what felt like hours, unable to muster the courage to let go of his hand or get up. The guilt in her wouldn't let her leave, and as much as she didn't want to, she had doubts that her own body was in any condition to make it out of the mountains alive. That was the only part of the entire situation which gave her any peace, the opportunity that she could stay right there, pass out and never wake up again.

Besides the sounds of Clarisse talking to herself lamenting her choices and apologizing to Nikolas's body over and over again, there wasn't much ambience under the cliff. And once her sobbing had subsided into quiet acceptance, there was even less to go around. Among the gentle whirs of the breeze and the shaking of leaves against each other, even the smallest noise could be heard from a mile in any direction.

And so it was.

Clarisse was awoken from a half-asleep, half-awake stupor by a sound from right next to her. Her first instinct was to look towards Nikolas, but he had remained as lifeless as before. On the other side, the gada lay, now showing a new phrase on it.

La Bella Vita Presto

Clarisse's eyes caught the shine in the weapon's inscriptions as she casually turned her head, and she nearly jumped at the sight. "La… " Clarisse scanned the gada, turning it around to make sure she wasn't hallucinating out of sorrow. Indeed, it seemed as if the gada was offering her a spell to cast.

"La Bella Vita Presto." Clarisse spoke aloud, unsure of what it would do but overjoyed at the opportunity. She turned herself to face Nikolas and clutched his hand tightly as she repeated the spell over and over again to make sure it stuck. "La Bella Vita Presto, LA BELLA VITA PRESTO! Nikolas- please wake up! La Bella Vita Presto!"

At first everything seemed so clear. There was no point to life other than to play the role assigned to him like parts in a well oiled machine. There was no room for those who deviated from the script, they were swiftly and efficiently removed from the confines of society. He had been removed long ago, shown a new role and made to act as such regardless of his volition. He had done his part, and now, he was on the brink of being free. The freedom in death seemed like nothing else - in a world of ever dynamic relativities and uncertainties, death seemed the only certain outcome, and so Nikolas had welcomed its thought for many years.

And yet, seeing the opportunity made him hesitate. He did have regrets, plenty of them, but they had never stopped him from taking action. No, this was something different. For a brief period, he had let himself trust someone else, not just to be themselves, but to help him. Now, standing on death's door, Nikolas heard a faint voice… it was one which had encouraged him to something other than his designation, something helpful to others, something with agency… someone.

A soft glow emanated from Nikolas's entire body as the spell coursed through him, gradually healing him. His internal wounds were the first to go, sounds of bones snapping into place and wounds sealing themselves shut creating a faint echo within the chasm. Open wounds were the last to go, but their bleeding had long since stopped. He heard and felt her well before he opened his eyes - Clarisse hugging him tightly and crying into his shoulder.

"You're alive! Oh, thank every god, you're alive." She sobbed softly, repeating the spell once more to make sure his progress was steadily towards staying alive. "La Bella Vita Presto…"

Eventually, Nikolas gained enough strength to speak. Raising one of his arms to feebly hold her shoulder from behind, he spoke in a whisper. "Why…"

"Don't you ever die while I'm still around…" Clarisse muttured back to him, before closing her eyes. Contentment giving way to exhaustion snatched her consciousness away almost instantly, leaving Nikolas to make his own judgements on what had happened. The resonator tilted his head to confirm her slumber, unsure of how to respond to what he had just experienced. A few more minutes of silence passed, before Nikolas let himself drift into sleep while he healed.

. . .

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The morning sun on the horizon brought day to the pair stranded under the cliff, a rare warmth among the weather of the wintry mountain range. Nikolas woke up first this time, greeted by the strange sight of a silvery-grey haired girl in his arms instead of the previous redhead.

"Clarisse?" He inquired, confused by the lack of color in her hair.

"Mmmm…" A sleepy response returned to him, seemingly unaware of her own condition. "La Bell… Presto…"

"You're out of rhythm…" Nikolas groggily came to a realization, before it hit him again and pushed him to awaken. "Stop casting spells, you're out of rhythm!" He exclaimed, trying to think of what he could do to alleviate the situation in the midst of her incomplete, sleepy responses. Everything within reach seemed to be the gada and Clarisse herself… Then he remembered the apple he had stolen from the monastery. Surely it hadn't been destroyed by the various scuffles they had had all day, he thought to himself as he fished out the partially beaten up fruit from the pockets of his robes.

"Clarisse, eat." He advised her, gradually shaking her awake and holding the apple right in front of her mouth. Still enveloped in exhaustion, she unconsciously complied with him and took a tiny bite of the fruit. "You're going to need more than that…" He sighed, encouraging her to eat more.

Clarisse gradually woke up to the sweet scent of the fruit's juice, and took a much bigger bite. Retroactively, her strength began returning in the same fashion that the color returned to her hair. "Mmh- you should have some as well." she spoke, still with a mouth full of fruit as she moved the half-eaten apple closer to him.

Nikolas responded with a short nod, freeing his hands from around her to break a chunk of the fruit from one side before handing the rest back to her. Both of them stayed as they were while they feasted on the small yet rewarding fruit. The awkward tension between maestro and resonator had faded by the time they were fully awake, with Clarisse laying her head against his shoulder and looking up at him.

"You're warm…" Clarisse blurted out without thinking, before quickly following up to cover up for herself. "Are your flames back?"

Nikolas's eyes widened just slightly as he considered the possibility. Raising one of his hands to eye-level, he focused on recalling his emotions of the past. To his pleasant surprise, a sizable ball of flame conjured itself at his command, rising from his palm. "I suppose they have."

"That's good!" Clarisse smiled, sitting upright before slowly getting up. The weather was just as freezing as before, but it was tolerable in his presence. "About last night…"

"I was gone." Nikolas stated, though strangely his tone lacked the usual cold undertone this time. "But I heard your voice and it led me to a way back."

Clarisse took in a deep breath, affirming that the night hadn't been a fever dream caused by all the snow she had been buried under by the avalanche. "We were trapped under the snow… You were gone for many hours before I had a chance to cast that spell." Her voice still held a tinge of fear as she recalled her hours of mourning.

"Congratulations." Nikolas replied in a tired, his bones creaking as he got up and stretched himself. "You saved a life."

Clarisse wanted to jab at his sarcasm, but held herself back as the realization that she really had saved his life came to. "I've shown you that I can save one… but I still need your help to save more."

"I'm… probably not the kind of person you want for that." Nikolas admitted, his shoulders drooping on either side, before he cast his gaze aside, looking at the rays of sunlight cutting through the forest and landing into the chasm. "Besides, I know what I want to do now."

Clarisse was left even more confused than before by his sudden change of heart, though she was afraid it was motivated in another direction. "What… what are you going to do?" she asked, taking a few steps to stand beside.

Nikolas paused before answering, raising one of his palms to look at the rekindling fire ablaze on it. "I am going to raze this world to cleanse its evils… burn everything until only the truth remains."

Clarisse felt her heart skip a beat as she considered his threat from before, to eradicate the people who had hurt him. "You mean…?"

"There will be good people too, who may be caught in my blaze." He admitted, glancing at her. The fire in his hand went out, leaving only an empty palm, though still warm, "They'll need someone to save them, both from me and everything else."

Clarisse caught onto his implication with newfound joy, raising her hand to place it in his and gently squeezing the warm palm. "A team?"

"Perhaps." Nikolas said, closing his fingers around her hand. He paused, considering his choice of words and determining a change to it. "I hope so. I want it to be one."

Clarisse couldn't help but crack a grin, nodding as her corners of her eyes moistened with tears of joy forming. "Thank you! I'll do my best!"

. . .

Walking down the mountainside, the maestro-resonator pair found an odd figure on their path. A man dressed in a black-red attire similar to Nikolas's if it were not as damaged and bloodstained, complete with a mace resting against the stone he had chosen as his seat. The figure got up, taking off a black cap with red highlights as he greeted the pair. "So, the legendary warrior and his fabled guide descend from the peaks."

Nikolas stopped in his tracks, lowering the bag he had slung over his shoulder to the ground as he glanced at Clarisse. "Doesn't that look like…?"

Clarisse was equally as perplexed as him, even going so far as to return the man's greeting with a short, confused bow. "I think I've seen you somewhere before."

"Sage of Victory, Kitori." The short yet regal man confirmed his identity, donning his cap again as he approached the pair. "It's been quite some time since you first set off, Clarisse. I was beginning to think you got lost on the way- and it is a pleasant delight to see you are still alive, Nikolas. I was suspecting otherwise." He greeted each of them on a more personal level, causing each to react in their own extreme manner.

"Either you're a real person, in which case you're an ass for letting your devotees die, or you're pulling a very shitty joke, in which case I'm going to throw you off the mountain." Nikolas replied with vitriol as he took in the figure of the supposed god the monastery worshipped, taking a few steps forward to get within arm's reach of him.

"No no, wait!" Clarisse rushed to Nikolas's side, stopping him from making any rash decisions. "He looks kinda like that old hermit who I met…"

The sage let out a hearty laugh at their comments. "I can assure you that I am very much real, and I can also assure you that no devotee of mine would give up their life without one hell of a fight. Now, you may try to get rid of me but you will fail."

Nikolas crossed his arms, scanning over the presented evidence before deciding it wasn't worth the risk to yeet the elder off the side of the mountain. "Fine. What do you want?"

"I am here to give you further instructions, of course!" Kitori smirked, before pointing towards Clarisse's gada with his own mace. "You used it well to find him, but this was only the first leg of your journey. You must now journey to Mount Clearoi, where you will find the source of the great evil which has befallen this world."

Nikolas and Clarisse exchanged glances, both somewhat confused yet considering the directions of the sage. It was a wordless conversation between themselves at first, before Clarisse turned towards Kitori and nodded with a smile.

"We'll do it! But- how do we get there, and by when?"

"The gada will guide you as it has till now, and you will arrive when you need to. Now go forth, write the legend into reality as it was always meant to be!" The sage proclaimed, blessing the warrior and caster with his approval as they set out on their adventure together.

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