Disclaimer: Is this really even necessary?? If Square-Enix wants to sue me for giving love to their characters and providing them with free publicity, good luck. My cash value is currently negative five figures.

Boy, this was one ambitious project. (And a record-length author's note.) I didn't really expect to write a trilogy. I didn't even HAVE Legend of Mana when I first started. But I just kept writing and having fun… and then the idea for a SD3/LoM crossover appeared.

Well, what should you expect here? For general details on my style, check my profile.

Specifics for this story: It's rather heavy on history, covering the (interpreted) time between SD3 and LoM. This ended up giving heavy roles to Lady Blackpearl, Anuella, and a few others. I followed the LoM world history book… slightly, because frankly, a lot of it doesn't flow well to me. (Ditto for a lot of the LoM plot; SD3, I think, was much better structured, but hey, that's why we have fanfic.)

I have changed, added, subtracted, multiplied, mutated, recombined, translated into base 2, generated, engineered, and otherwise generally messed with LoM. I think I can guarantee originality at this point. If you are interested in something more canonical, I would be happy to direct you to the appropriate location.

Meeerf, why should I sign up to read anything you say is going to be sixty chapters long? Well, among other reasons, the thing is loosely finished. Not absolutely, mind you, but close enough… I couldn't finish the beginning until I finished the ending. So, yeah... stick with me, it'll get done.

A few words about story structure. The story is divided into duos of chapters, labelled alternatively "Secrets" and "Legends"; the duos are somewhat connected. Each duo will be posted together at one or two week frequencies, depending how much reality rears its ugly head.

Secrets: This comprises the crossover/background part of the story. These chapters are nonlinear and divergent, sometimes historical, sometimes philosophical, occasionally fluffy, but all with some LoM relevance. They take place in the PAST, either distant or recent. Familiarity with either my other stories or Seiken Densetsu 3 is advised. Put another way, if it's something I made up in my fics, I'll help you along, but I am going to have to assume you know the people and places of SD3. It's just not practical to start from scratch. (Cheat sheet: "Dark and Light", chapter 55, is a glossary that will help you out with background to SD3, if you don't know the game.)

Legends: This is… sort of a LoM novelization, and sort of not. -shrug- You be the judge. These chapters are linear, and occur in the present time frame. Since this is the first time I'm writing LoM, no prior knowledge is needed; it should stand alone.

For the review-inclined: I'd be especially interested in knowing what you find confusing and how you think things might turn out. If I like ideas, I may be able to work in. If it's confusing, it might be meant to be answered later, or occasionally I leave things deliberately open-ended… but in case I missed my goals, I'd like to know.

Oh, and by all means, pick out typos. It saves me the trouble.

Credit where credit is due: A lot of the story was helped along by Tiamat42 (and her heroine Ren), who first got me interested in Legend of Mana; that, and putting up with me writing lengthy late-night emails and sending insightful things back. I also lifted some info from the LoM forum run by Cheetah Smith. Some details of the Jumi knight-guardian relationship were modeled on Robert Jordan's Aes Sedai-Warder relationship. I read a number of other things on this site over the past few months, and was likely inspired by them all, but hopefully I haven't ripped off anyone directly.

Warnings and Dealbreakers: My style tends to be rather dark (again, check profile), so there will be sometimes-brutal violence, tragedy, profanity, occasional ingestion of alcohol and other substances, and sexual overtones.

Oh, and at the risk of spoilers, I feel obligated to tell you that it will be Elazul/Heroine, in case that's an issue for you. I can already hear one cheering section going "Yay, I LOVE that pairing!" and the other saying, "Oh, that's so overdone!"

But as Elazul would say: It's my story, dammit.

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1. Secrets: Memories

The secret was in the tablet, and she could not pull it out.

She should have been able to, if anyone in this new world without Mana could. They called her the "Priestess of Mana" now. No "Queen of Altena;" that had been gone for a long time, so long she barely remembered that identity. Neither did she hear "Queen of Forcena" here, especially when her husband, King Richard, stayed behind. His health was getting to the point where traveling this far was no longer easy. At sixty-two, Valda was no longer so young herself.

She was still a beautiful woman, she thought, though her hair was a little lighter now. A silvery-pale lavender much like Hawk's; she had always wondered what mixed blood had brought Altenan purple hair to a Navarrese. But Altenan hair never got truly white, and the still-colored tresses let her believe she was still young.

Valda scolded herself for letting her mind drift to such frivolous thoughts. Generally, she was single-mindedly devoted to her work when here, at the university of Pedan, the institution she had founded to record whatever knowledge of Mana she could find. For someone who had once been a leader of the greatest magic-using kingdom of the world, it was an appropriate calling.

She had filled the gap left by the loss of Mana with this, storing and recording information for future generations, for the time when Mana would come back, when the Goddess would return. That, the loss of Mana, was the only loss in her life she had found it difficult to get over. The strained raising of Angela, the years before she could be with Richard, even the fragmented loss of years of memories that Koren had left her with, all these she understood, and accepted. But Mana was something she felt no substitute for.

She never missed being the Queen of Altena; she wasn't sure she knew how to be that nation's ruler, without magic. Angela was doing a much better job nowadays than she could hope to. Perhaps that was why she clung to every bit of knowledge she could find, to remember that part of herself as well.

It was safe to assume she was the greatest living expert on Mana. Angela had been stronger in raw magic power, but her daughter never had any patience for scholarship.

"It was in the ruins of the temple, Mother," Loki told her.

Her seventeen-year-old son was the image of his father Richard, more so every year, Valda thought, except for the violet hair. He had the dignity and dedication of his namesake, Duran's father. It made things easier on her.

She had been in her twenties and thirties raising Angela; now, somehow, at age sixty-two, she had a teenager all over again. At least this one wasn't the hellcat Angela had been. She was far too old to repeat that experience.

"Mother? The tablet?" Loki asked, snapping Valda out of her memories. Wordlessly, she reached for the piece of ancient Pedan stone that Loki held out for her, taking the heavy chunk of masonry from him with both hands.

It didn't look exactly the same, but she knew, knew this was the same tablet she had seen so long ago. "I've been to that temple," Valda murmured, half to herself. It had been several lifetimes, several selves ago. And in another's lifetime altogether, Angela had been to the same temple. She brushed her hand over the worn lettering that was in no language remembered, that only the power of Mana made comprehensible to humans, so only the mages could read it, like those who had once inhabited Pedan.

Loki almost seemed to understand her thoughts. That, his probing thoughtfulness, was from her, not Richard, she thought with a surge of pride. "I think my sister talked about this," he told her, "the tablet that told her..."

Valda tossed it over and over in her hands. "...where to find the mana stones," she finished. "Only that's not what it says anymore. Now it says the stones are gone."

"How do you know?" he asked, perplexed. "It looks like nonsense to me."

"You can't read it," she told him gently, pushing it across the table towards the young man. "You feel it."

His face twisted into concentration as he fingered the grooved markings, but his expression fell soon enough. "I don't feel anything."

"I'm not surprised," Valda replied, pulling the stone back towards her. "You were born after Mana left the world... maybe you need to have known Mana to know what you are looking for..."

"But Mana's gone," Loki protested. "You've said it, over and over. So what is it there?"

Valda sighed and turned her head away, staring at the wall as if she could will Pedan into what it once was. "It is gone. The tablet shouldn't have changed, nor should I be able to read it. But it contains Mana still. It's like an artifact of Mana."

"It has Mana?" asked Loki eagerly. "Then can we use the Mana inside it?"

Valda wished she could allow herself the luxury of such hope herself, but she could not pretend ignorance or naivete. She had seen too much, experienced too many things, for her to accept anything less than the truth. She caressed the ancient tablet gently, allowing herself a moment of remembrance for what was, and an even smaller moment to imagine what might be.

"It's not enough to make a difference," Valda chided him gently. "It's barely a trickle. It's better left to hold a memory."