I always like those stories in which authors expand upon the Mystics' emotions, and Ildon has always been one of my favorites. I imagine that Rastaban's end would be something he may or may not ever recover from, and Asellus will probably never replace him in all respects. At the very least, Ildon can know that Rastaban's action was a indeed a heroic one. This is a wonderful and touching bit of writing.

I love your stories, although I'll admit I've been lax in saying so.

You have a fantastic way of simultaneously getting down to the nitty gritty of a character's thoughts and feelings and conveying it in a beautiful prose. You can convey intricate, complex emotions without getting too flowery or breaking it down so far that it reads like an essay. But what really impresses me is that you can extrapolate so much from what are really such a flat bunch. I love SaGa Frontier-enough that I still haunt a dying section of this site-but it's so mauled by cuts and edits as to cripple its otherwise engaging narrative.

Rastaban seems like an interesting character, but he has hardly any screen time in the actual game. That being said, your frequent returns to the character give us a reasonable, believable and perhaps even sympathetic lens through which we can view him and his tragic relationship to his lover-turned-Asellus'-sidekick. That's another thing a lot of people don't dwell on; what must it have been like for him to turn his back on everything he had known? Your answer is heartbreaking.