(Writer's note: Discretion is advised)

The lone figure walked down the dimly lit hallway of the subterranean fortress, his jade eyes still heavy with interrupted sleep. Beside him walked another figure, taller than the first and dressed as a soldier on a street parade in times of old, his silvery and ornate helmet flashing akin to a lighthouse as they passed each fairy light, and a cape swishing to-and-fro on calf level. If a bystander had guessed the duo to be student and teacher, he would have been right.
Many feet above them lay the quiet town of Kippo, a place generally off the main tourist route, however, visitors to the nearby scenic Gaia's Navel, a large, water created hole in the ground, was the majority. It was from this town that Cannon Travel, the main means of transport on the world of Fa'Diel, and the great soldier, Dyluck, were born.
But there was another birth here about sixteen years ago, and the result of that birth was now on a world totally foreign to him, currently shrouded in night. He, too, was called Dyluck, but he had Thanatos as his second name - deliberately ironic as the original owner had killed the original owner of his first name - and Yoshi von Kippo as his last. He was sitting on a spire of a building called a Nexus, which was partly destroyed, looking towards the north.
"Riu…" he whispered, the name of his love.
Dyluck Thanatos liked to call himself Lich, though originally a name he despised. It had a certain air to it, and people would recognise him far better than if he was called Dy on the world he called his second home: Yamauchi. From there he had been plucked, and had been through a stint as a statue, and a slave to someone he had known from before - his shoulder still bearing the scar of his being owned.
Riu Darae Sierschta, or Dragon as she was better known, had also been drawn onto this forsaken planet. And now she was lost, her free will taken over by the scheming of an evil Archon named Ulrezaj.
Lich let out a sigh from the inner depths of his being, knocking a tear from his eye.
"I've been told of Ulrezaj's power…" he muttered in Yoshian, one of his two main languages, "and even though we met for half a minute, he is far too strong for me to handle. All he has to do his click his fingers - if he has any fingers in that red energy ball he is - and I'll be struck down by some horrid force of the Left Path: my skin melting into liquid, my bones burning into ashes. It's no use, Nessie, it's no use."
Nessie was Lich's Dragonite: A Pokémon once caught on the end of a rod by him in Fuchia City's Safari Zone Gamepark, once a Dratini, a blue spawn akin to a tadpole, and now an orange dragon, his appearance friendly, yet behind him he could muster a tremendous force. He was the brother Lich adopted for himself, as he had lost his own in his youth, though he was still his master. Dragonites were on the same intellectual level as human beings, so once their language could be translated through a PLT, meaningful conversations could be struck with them. Nessie was no different, and now he was listening to his master's words.
"Look all around you, Lich, what do you see?" he asked, spreading a paw over the view of the Protoss base they were in.
"I see a Protoss base, but even their firepower and warcraft are no match for Ulrezaj's powers."
"Lich, this is the woman you love! Don't you think any attempt of getting her out of his clutches is better than nothing?"
Lich stood up and looked square into Nessie's eyes.
"At the cost of an army and possibly a base? Just for love? She's gone, Nessie, she's gone, and not even the Mana Spirit, who resides in my head, could bring her back to me! It's a trap if I go, and a heavy loss either way!"
You have no will to listen to what is possible for me, so I shall remain silent until you do! a voice rocked the air between them.

Lich could not sleep that night, provided that part of the fact was the hole in his dark quarters, conveniently located above his head so that the storm outside rained on him and the wind howled through it. He had tried relocating himself many times, but he could not stay dry. Outside his door the control centre had lost its roof, and the rain seeped down through the floors of the building, as if the Nexus had become a complex water fountain. Nowhere was dry in the building.
He knew exactly what had caused the damage: Dragon. She had downed the flagship of the carrier fleet, the Gantrithor II, right above the Nexus as he watched from above, before flying off to join Ulrezaj.
It was exactly the right atmosphere for Lich's mood: angry, fearful and morose, the very pits of depression. He lay stomach down on the floor, after stripping himself of his belt, PLT, thongs, and wiping the zinc cream off his nose so thoroughly that the area behind his nostrils was now as pink as the substance that usually sat there. His arms were brought up around his face; his sobs wetting them so much that it was hard to tell which droplets were tears or rain.
"Why do things always have to come my way? I've lost my love, my brother, the Cyan Arc and those I once called friend, my parents think I'm dead, I've been turned into a statue, I've met and been defeated by the bearer of my own nickname, I've been through the desert only to be enslaved, stabbed and hypnotised as a tool of Havering to betray my own then friends, who've given me no justice. I'm stuck on some Shade-forsaken world created by some maniac wielding tremendous power who wants to wear me down, with no hope of getting back…you've done your work, Havering. I am like a rock, I can be shattered, and you've done it. Can I just go home now, or die?"
The storm replied with a resounding echo of thunder. Lich looked up at the cold wall in front of his face, before he moved his hands out so that his elbows made a perpendicular bend. He started to concentrate, and a grey, dim light appeared in a circle around his naked, orange and white body. His mind was set on something he could only do once, and it would be the last thing he could ever do if he succeeded.
"Shade, take me on your back to the other side of the darkness when I'm through with this!" he yelled in Pandoran.
The grey light subsided, and Lich brought his hands down towards his chest, closing them into a tight fist, before he opened them in a sudden movement.
He shut his eyes.

After about ten seconds, he came to the realisation that nothing had happened. He tried again. He brought his fists down to his chest again, this time clutching
them so tightly that his arms shook.
Nothing happened.
And again, he tried. His fingers pressed so tightly into his palms that his skin strained and capillaries busted, spilling their contents out between his fingers, but still nothing happened.
Suddenly, the door burst open, and Markior, Yoshi God of the Mind, Executor of the Base, and Guardian of the Yoshi species stood there.
"Do you mind not creating such large ripples on the Field, you woke -"
He surveyed the scene, and whispered "By Adun…"
He looked around him, and saw that the collection of Mana that was to have exploded in a Dark Force spell had rebounded off Lich by Mana Spirit's intervention and, uncontrolled, silently to ears but a raucous for Mana Sensing, blown up some loose plates on the floor.
"Lich…you haven't tried to...have you?"
The Guardian's only response was a deep sob.