"You've been learning magic?" Ethan asked Chiron as the three of them made their way through the winding cliffs and waterfalls that made Besaid unique. The Myrmidon nodded happily.<br/><br/>"Amal has taught me much of her ways! Means to imbue my blade with many magics, with the lightning to strike at the water, with the fire to strike the ice, with the light to strike the dark!" He gripped Attila tight, and his bravado faded. "Though what to strike at your Sin with, I would not know... such a beast, surely it cannot be slain."<br/><br/>"It can." Ethan's voice was quiet, pensive, thoughtful. There was only one way to kill Sin that anyone knew of. He had tried to explain it to Chiron before, the act of summoning, of calling forth a being from another plane of existence to aid its summoner, but the concepts were too abstract to get past the language barrier successfully. The closest he'd come was equating summoners to the priests of Chiron's homeland, who could occasionally call on the gods for aid, but it didn't quite seem the same. He was about to try again, to explain about the Final Summon, the Pilgrimage, but Amal interrupted with a rather ridiculously fake cry of alarm.<br/><br/>Chiron wheeled, though, golden blade flashing as he drew it. "Ah-ha! Foul friend, prepare to taste the power of my magics!"<br/><br/>"Fiend, Chiron. It's a fiend. We're friends."<br/><br/>"Of course, fiend E'tan!" Chiron's blade had begun to glow with a light entirely its own, the sun's rays barely touching it. He held the weapon in both hands and focused intensely, feet sliding into a battle pose as the flan wiggled stupidly in place. "Feast upon the fury of Zeus, foul creature!" He leapt forward, clearing the five feet between him and the creature in a single bound, and thrust Atilla through its gelatinous core. Lightning flared from the blade throughout the creature, and it shuddered violently before evaporating on the spot, dissolving into a cloud of pyreflies rather than vapor.<br/><br/>Chiron looked around at the glowing lights, reaching up to watch them play across his arm and fingers, then sheathed his blade and turned to grin at the others. "No friend can withstand my might!"<br/><br/>"Isn't that the truth?" Ethan deadpanned. "Let's hurry, though. We might end up with more fiends if we don't."<br/><br/>He turned to resume walking down the path, which had turned upward at a fairly sharp angle. Chiron glanced at Amal, eyebrow quirked. "These... pyreflies... they are damned souls?" he asked, walking alongside her as they followed the priest.<br/><br/>Ethan paused at the top of the rise, from which he could look down into the village below. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he could hear voices shouting in panic. The village was small, tinier even than the stilted huts of Kilika, but a third of it was obscured entirely by smoke and destruction. Worse, something was moving at the edge of that destruction, something large and scaly. People were beginning to flee from the village, and the priest reached back to grip his weapon. "Chiron, Amal! Trouble!" he called, then turned to race down the slope that led to the village.<br/><br/>He raced past the villagers as they fled for their lives, already gathering what energy he could summon into his lance. Just outside the town gates he spun and swung it downward and thrust the sphere against the ground. It flared, and the magical propulsion sent him soaring, robes and braid flickering in the wind as he shot skyward with a burst of light. He aimed as he flew, taking the lance in both hands as he came into the apex of his jump. When he came down it was point-first toward the Sinspawn, a large quadrupedal monster covered in armor-like scales. The tip of his lance struck one and glanced off, and Ethan leapt clear of the monster as one huge clawed limb swiped at him.<br/><br/>Ethan landed next to a half-ruined wall, sliding back a few steps as he sized up the monster in full. Easily twelve feet tall and just as wide, its entire body was covered in the scales, each of which were the size of dinner plates and shaped like arrowheads. Two short stalks supported eyes that were beady and black, and a small mouth just beneath them wheezed and panted toxic air.<i>Sin's toxin,</i>he thought to himself.<i>Best stay clear.</i>He gripped his lance tight in both hands, pacing backward as the ponderous creature advanced, looking for any opening to attack.