Preloude

I've been hearing the name Nerva al'Thor ever since I was a small kid, living in the outskirts of Payon with my wretched stepfather, abused mother and bubbly little sister.

Even then the name sparked some intrigue in me. Geffen, as you see it, is way too far from Alberta, but news about this mysterious of red-haired boy reaches us like wildfire.

Nerva's the best in magic...

Nerva's from Izlude, but he's a Magician...

Nerva's cute... ( he's gonna kill me when he reads this )

Ah, those sorts of things. But I was clueless about him still. I wouldn't meet him personally until I was sixteen years of age.


It was peculiar, the way I met Nerva. With Wealthow and Theodoric with me, we've been sent by King Tristriam IV to pick him up in Geffen and make him join our party, Firnheild, to help us in our mission concering the dark creature called the Shadow.

Nerva was lying on a dusty bed and locked in a deep slumber, when I first laid my eyes on him.

I mean, talk about that-----imagine an ultra cool Wizard with great good looks reduced to a corpse-like frame. I mean it! I've never seen a starved Wizard before, if I may quote Theodoric himself. I was baffled.

I mean, I knew----we, that is----we knew about the whole Byalan Incident, and I believed parts of it, but Wealthow refused to. SHe said there was no evidence whatsoever, and that Nerva's being sentenced to lifetime imprlocked in a deep slumber, when I first laid my eyes on him.

Wealthow asked Lothair to remove the sleeping draught from Nerva, but since he didn't respond quickly, we presumed him dead. Theo and I left the room with the elder, but Wealthow's shriek called us back.

Nerva was there, awake, with bloodshot eyes and had Wealthow hostage. I remember him shooting me with his hawklike gaze. I swear it made me shudder---made my knees tremble for a bit.

There was something in him----awful to behold, but scary to get near to lest you want to die. And I still haven't found out what that was.

Theo attacked-----he had always been stupidly reckless for a Knight-----but Nerva poofed him up with Frost Diver and blasted the walls and tried to escape with Wealthow and Theo's Peco. It happened faster than you can say his name.

Let's skip some details. We got Wealthow back----and now to persuade Nerva to join us. He seemed to have developed a phobia or trauma regarding joining parties or something like that.

Said that we would die too if we insisted to be with him.

But I didn't believe that crap. That is, until I saw the Shadow with my own eyes.

-tbc-

Maybe if it wasn't for my efforts, Nerva wouldn't have spoken to us at all. I remember asking him about who he was and where he came from, and he did seem really reluctant to tell me----but he answered me all the same.

Whenever he's alone he's always in a trance-like state, his yellow eyes dull and glazed over as he looked ahead...sometimes I would just see him wincing in pain as he clutched his chest----I dunno if I'm the only one who noticed this----but it was really disturbing as if he had a heart sickness or something like that...

I worshipped Nerva because he was the best----and that he deserved every admiration and glory that the Reclusion Perpetua sentence had taken from him. You can't help but admire him. His talents are easily seen. He speaks in measured voices and uses words which such brevity that he's always quick to the point.

Nerva never told me anything, but I was sure that his life was an ironical twist of fame and glory. Nobody in Midgard did not know of his banishment from Izlude and his deprivation of his rights as the next in line to the guild The Covenant.

I wish I could get him to talk----to tell us what is wrong with him, but he never does that. He just continues to bear his own problem. I don't know if he just doesn't want to bother other people----or maybe he really doesn't want to trust anyone anymore.

Think of all he went through. He's been imprisoned for seven years in the Arcane Tower, without even the slightest sunshine to warm his skin. And then in the fifth year of his imprisonment they forced him to sleep.

What if he never really killed anyone?

Nah, so many questions. Nerva, Nerva....who can solve the riddle that you are?


-tbc-

Nerva, it transpired, was NOT responsible for the Byalan Incident. It was all a set-up, a cowardly plan devised by another Wizard to make him go down and fall from his glory. That stinking, cowardly Wizard is none other than Lothair, his ex-mentor and master.

It was disgusting.

We found out that Lothair had wanted to kill Nerva long ago for stealing all the Geffenese students to himself----but since Nerva got recruited by Isidore Crane into his elite Swastika, Nerva became protected.

And so Lothair planned the murder, hoping that Nerva lived. That way, Nerva was to be blamed for the crime. It was a seemingly flawless plan----like a web with no escape. But truth will always find it's way, and because of helping each other out, we were able to clear Nervy's name.

The Shadow----a monster engineered only by the foulest of all men, Lothair himself. If it didn't possess Nerva earlier, we couldn't have won the mission.

Crap, now that I'm recalling it, it seems harder than it looks. We knew we were hopeless at that time----Nerva kidnapped and we couldn't find him anywhere-----but still we fought on, never wavering our faith in him----that he'd come to help.

And he came, you know....used the Mightiest Apocalypse Spell.

Only....that spell....

...
...

That spell....well....it killed him too....


-tbc-

Wealthow was just arriving (in Theo's arms, because she had her leg broken) when Nerva gave up on us. His head drooped into my chest, and that awful coldness swept all over him in an alarming pace.

The next moments seemed like a blur....all I could remember we were all crying our hearts out...Theodoric punching Nerva shouting for him to wake up....Signy trembling all over....Sibyl run off to someplace she could be alone...

And then....Nerva's body disappeared. I watched, horrified, as he became transparent....and then he just vanished....leaving behind his golden cross choker, the one he got from Isidore Crane's bones way back in Byalan Island.

I was dazed after that...I didn't even remember coming back to Prontera and reporting to King Tristriam IV what happened....all I knew was grief beyond tears....for someone who's suffered so much....

That's it really....what Nerva's life seemed to me...having met him and gotten to know him partially in just a couple of days.

:sigh:

His life's still a blur....for most of us. Only he himself can tell us what had really taken place...if ever he's been happy in that life he had...

I would want so much to get to know him better....

Nerva, Nerva, who can solve the riddle that you are...?

I wonder...


-the end-