"Van! Vandesdelca! To me, quickly!"
Van dodged a stream of fire as the enemy fonists launched another barrage of the Fifth Fonon as he fought his way over to his master. "Yes, my lord Gardios?"
"The battle is lost, boy. Head inside and get the women and children and send them out the back entrance. Then-"
"Sir, I can still fight! I'll take every last one of these Kimlascan bastards down sir, I-"
"DAMN it boy, do as your told! Get them out and take yourself down to the facility in the basement. Tell Desmond this: 'Death cannot be healed; it is time for the twins to meet.' Remember it, boy. GO!"
Van nodded and dashed off into the manor. Lord Gardios turned toward the swarm of Kimlascans with the golden sword of his house held high. "Come and face me, Fabre! Cease hiding behind your fonists, or be known as craven among your own men!"
The deadly barrage of fonons ceased. The ranks of the Kimlascan army parted as a small retinue of men made its way to the fore, led by a man with fiery red hair. The man cocked his head and waved off his guards, cutting short the protest of his soldiers. "You want to face me personally, Gardios? Very well, let us see the famed Sigmund style you're so fond of..."
Meanwhile, young Vandesdelca found himself running in the long corridors of the Gardios mansion looking for the women and children he was to evacuate. His heart raced as he thought of the battle outside; he hoped Master Gardios would fare well without him. As he ran through the servants' quarters shouting for all to follow him, he rather vaguely noted that the halls were oddly empty. The fact unfortunately barely registered on his mind as he raced towards the Gardios family hallway, looking for young master Guy and his older sister Mary.
Finding himself at last in the hallway containing the rooms of the Gardios family, Vandesdelca began to search for Guy and Mary. He burst into Mary's room shouting "Mary, we've got to go, the-" He cut short as he noticed the room was empty. Puzzled, he backed out of Mary's room and checked Guy's room. This room was also empty, containing naught but clothes and young Guy's toys. It was obvious the room was but recently occupied; a small toy saber rattled slightly where it had been dropped but a few moments prior to his arrival in the room. Vandesdelca made to leave the room, but as he did so he heard a cheer coming from the open window on the opposite wall. He rushed eagerly to the window, hoping to see his comrades routing the Kimlascans. The sight that greeted him however, was that of a red-haired man waving an all too familiar golden sword back and forth in the air. Impaled upon the sword was the head of Van's master, Lord Gardios. Van's eyes blurred with tears and he very nearly jumped out the window to attack Duke Fabre. However the last order of his now dead master came back to him and he turned to head for the Gardios bedroom.
"Milady Mary! Master Guy! We must leave at on-" Van's voice died as he burst into the bedroom and beheld the sight inside. Three Kimlascan soldiers, their swords red with blood, stood leering over a pile of corpses. Every last one of the broken bodies were women; the soldiers had butchered every maid and servant in the entire house. On top of the pile was young lady Mary, her dress torn and her limbs bloodied and splayed. Van's eyes widened; all thought ceased. The first Kimlascan soldier's throat was torn out in the space of half a second; the man didn't even have time to draw his sword. The second managed to draw his sword, but the infuriated Van buried his saber deep in the man's chest before he could do any more. The third, shocked by the sheer speed and ferocity of Van's attack, tossed his sword away and cried "Mercy!". Van didn't even hesitate; leaving his saber embedded to the hilt in the second soldier's chest, he drew upon the Fifth Fonon to perform a Raging Blast on the third soldier, incinerating the man from the waist up. Breathing heavily, Van surveyed the wreckage of the room and retrieved his saber from the dead soldier's chest. After one last glance at Mary's broken body, he fled the room. Shortly after his departure, faint cries emanated from the center of the mass of death...
Van never really could remember how he found his way to the basement. He left a trail of Kimlascan bodies from the family wing all the way down; most of the unfortunates he'd come across died not even knowing who or what had killed them. The next clear memory he had was moving the set of crates covering the secret entrance to the basement facility. As he moved the final box off the top of the trap door, a woman burst out from behind the boxes swinging a small dagger. Van knocked the dagger out of her hand and had his saber halfway to her throat before he realized who it was.
"Mother?"
"Vandesdelca? Oh Van, it
is
you." She fell limp in his arms, relief evident on her face. "I thought... I thought you'd died out there! Where is Master Gardios? And Guy? Mary?"
Van's face twisted as he thought of his dead masters. "All dead. Guy and Mary were killed by infiltrating Kimlascan soldiers, and Master Gardios died in a duel with that bastard Duke Fabre. Master Gardios said I have to get to the lab downstairs; he had a final message for Desmond."
Van's mother nodded. "Let's go, Van."
The two of them shouldered open the trapdoor and headed down the staircase below. The staircase spiraled down a large stone column; the stairs appeared to go on for quite some time. About half a dozen steps down, Van pressed a seemingly ordinary stone in the wall. The wall made a slight hissing noise; a large section of the wall wavered and vanished, revealing a smooth chute. "The stairs are a distraction," Van explained at his mother's curious glance. "They don't actually lead anywhere, they end in a lake about 200 meters on top of the real lab. We go through here. Follow me." He jumped into the chute. After a few minutes, the chute leveled out and deposited Van on a soft pad. He rolled out of the way just as his mother came zooming out of the chute behind him. As he picked himself up and helped his mother off the ground, a group of soldiers followed by a scientist walked into the room.
"Vandesdelca!" the man in the back cried. "What has happened? Where is Master Gardios?"
"Dead, Desmond" replied Van shortly. "He gave me a message for you."
As Van repeated the message to Desmond, the man's eyes tightened. "So that's what it's come to, has it..." He nodded at the nearest soldier. "Follow me, Van."
As Van moved to follow Desmond, the soldier Desmond nodded to struck Van behind his left ear. The room went black...
Van awoke to find himself strapped to a chair, wires and other devices trailing from his head, arms and chest. He groggily registered his mother being held by guards elsewhere in the room and Desmond fiddling with some kind of control panel about five feet away. "What the hell is going on here, Desmond?" Desmond ignored him, continuing to type frantically at the control panel. Above, a giant glass sphere began to glow with white energy.
"That... is that the Seventh Fonon, Desmond? What's happening?" As he spoke, the room began to vibrate with a low hum. Desmond turned to look at him.
"We're going to wipe out the Kimlascans, Van. And we're using you to do it."
Van stared at the man. "How do you propose to do that?"
"By creating a controlled hyperresonance, of course. That sphere above is currently capturing a large amount of Seventh Fonons from the Fon Belt. When the level of fonons inside the sphere is great enough, we're going to have the Seventh Fonons inside you collide with them, creating a hyperresonance. The energy from the hyperresonance will be used to-"
"Are you
insane
? How the hell are you going to control a hyperresonance of that size?" Van yelled.
Desmond cocked his head. "Why do we need to control it? Everyone else is already dead. We're just killing the Kimlascans..." He slammed a lever up. The vibrations increased several fold; the glass sphere began to crack, glowing hotter than ever. "Good bye, Van." Desmond walked away.
Van struggled against his bonds to no avail. His mother appeared at his side with her dagger; the guards had run in terror at Desmond's calm announcement of their impending demise. She began to hack frantically at his restraints as the sphere cracked in several more places. "Van, I don't think we're going to make it out of here..."
Van looked at her calmly. "Yes, mother, we are." He raised his face to look at the straining, incandescently glowing sphere in the sky and began to sing. "Kuroa Ryuo Zue Toue Ryuo Rei Neu Ryuo Zue..."
The sphere exploded in a mass of white hot energy. The unleashed energy was incredible; it fountained out in a cascade of crashing tides consuming all in its path. Soldiers in its wake flashed to nothingness. Trees, houses, monuments; nothing living nor dead escaped as the wrath of the planet turned against them. Such was the magnitude of the calamity that a hole was burned in the outer shell of the planet itself, causing the remnants of the island of Hod to fall into the miasma-choked Qliphoth, the name for the lower shell of the planet. Among the ash and debris that was all that remained of Hod, a small dome glowed in the mud of the Qliphoth. Inside that dome were Van and his mother, who had been saved by the Fonic Hymn Van had begun to sing shortly before the Fonic Sphere had exploded. Ceasing his singing at last, Van stared at the hole in the sky that had once been his home.
"Mother, we need to get you to safety as soon as possible. Then, I have some business in Kimlasca..."
Oh well lets get this party started . 
