[ He rests his cheek against her shoulder, her touch, as always, so stabilizing. Where he might get caught up in the shadows of his past, she's there to keep him facing the light. While she's sick, too...and for the nth time, he wonders what he did to deserve her.

Whatever it is, he'll never stop being grateful. ]

It's like a battery. [ She might not know what batteries all. This is a bad metaphor. Moving on. ] Like a super powerful energy source. The King had been using it to keep a barrier up around the whole city. But it's only half of a pair. The Crystal's only as powerful as it is when it's used by someone of the royal line, wearing the Ring of the Lucii. Luckily, Luna was keeping that safe, but even if the Emperor had both...I doubt he could've really done anything with them. But that didn't stop him from trying.

[ And...well.

They'd been to Gralea to see how well that worked out for Niflheim. ]

After we found out what happened...[ Well, what else were they going to do? ] We started figuring out how to fight back.