‘We’re here!’ announced Olivia. ‘This is it! This is the cave of the Clarent Sword!’

In the face of the mountain slope, which was quite steep here, an opening could be discerned; a dark hole in amidst the snow-covered rock. It wasn’t even as if it was very big–perhaps two persons’ across. In the fading evening light, they might have been forgiven for missing it entirely, were it not for the presence of Olivia to guide them.

It reminded Horatio of the entrance to the tetrachamber they had raided–or attempted to raid–back near Balamb just after they had set out on this journey.

In fact, now that he thought of that, he noticed the shape of what looked like a boulder standing just to one side of the opening. It had slightly less snow on it, so that some of the grey stone peeked out behind the dusting of white, as if some of the snow had been shaken off when it had been recently moved.

‘Someone’s beaten us to it!’ Horatio said. ‘Someone’s opened this chamber already!’

The duty of heroism animating him with fresh energy, he dashed forwards across the snow. Ross ran forwards too, but Horatio made it to the opening first, and ducked inside.

‘Go carefully!’ Primus called after him, no doubt following with the others. ‘We do not know who or what has made it here first!’

After he had run a few steps into the cave, Horatio stopped, and a gasp escaped his lips.

It had not been visible from the outside, but beyond the shadowed entrance, the cave mouth opened up into a vast, icy cavern.

The others caught up with him, and similar exclamations of awe began to slip from their lips.

The cave floor, walls and ceiling seemed to be composed entirely of ice. But they only seemed to be, since the whole cavern was lit by an eerie, magical luminescence that appeared to emanate from within the ice itself, making the place shimmer and glitter and lending it a glowing blue hue. For all Horatio knew, the cavern was carved out of some sort of glowing blue crystal, but ice was his closest approximation. Stalicmites and stalicites of it protruded up from the cave floor or hung from its ceiling, their tips twinkling. Every surface was uneven–here and there clumps of the glowing substance gathering together on the floor, or parts of the wall jutting out at a gradient, or parts of the ceiling reaching down in places–as if the cavern really had been carved by humans from a deposit of crystal within the mountain over many years.

And there, in the centre of the cavern, below and in front of them after the floor stretched out down a sharp slope before flattening out, was the unmistakable shape of a gleaming, golden sword-hilt.

The hilt was poised vertically downwards at the end of a blade which stuck up out of a crystal pedestal.

A figure was moving towards the sword, walking to it across the cavern floor. All Horatio could see at this distance was that it had a wild mass of white hair that stuck up on its head.

‘Hey!’ Horatio called out. His voice echoed around the cavern and came back to him from several different places, amplified. The voice of a hero, claiming his moment. ‘You! Stop right there! That sword is ours!’ He had almost said “mine”, but for some reason “ours” came out instead.

Surprise jolted Horatio when the figure actually stopped and turned round to look up at him.

A man. As well as the mess of white hair, which stuck up all over the place around his head, he wore a white robe, white trousers and white boots. He was white as the snow outside, except for a red sash which he wore around his waist.

Horatio wasted no more time, and started running down the slope towards the man. The others all ran with him.

When Horatio was about ten paces away, the man held up a hand and said ‘Halt!’

In spite of himself, Horatio stopped in his tracks. The others pulled up alongside him too. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had stopped. There were ten of them now, and only one of this man. But they had fought enough crazy, overpowered lone Braxians in the last few weeks for him to think twice about rushing this peculiar man straight away.

‘Who in Gard are you?’ Primus asked for the party.

The man smiled. ‘I might ask the same of you, fellow travellers,’ he said. He had a strangely youthful face, boyish and fresh, which was at odds with his long white hair and slightly mocking, mature voice. His skin was almost as white as his clothing–though he had bright green eyes, the only bit of colour on him other than the blood-red sash he wore around his waist. ‘Who might all of you be?’

‘You tell us who you are first,’ said Olivia. ‘How did you discover the location of this Sword? Are you another Braxian, come to steal it for the Demon King?’

The man threw back his head and laughed an unexpectedly deep laugh which resounded around the cavern, bouncing back at them from the walls.

‘Oh, heavens no!’ he said, returning his gaze to Olivia. ‘If you must insist on me introducing myself first, I suppose there is no harm in that. My name is Alex. I am the destined Hero of Gard.’

The words sunk in for a moment.

‘You’re the what?’ said Egea.

‘The destined Hero of Gard,’ repeated Alex, smiling happily. ‘Every few hundred years or so the Cult of Brax manage to summon the Demon King from his imprisonment between the worlds, so I collect my things and go and defeat him, then seal him up again. It’s getting to be a bit of a tedious cycle, to be honest. But Brax is immortal, at least for the time being, so this is the best I can do, for now. I’ve been doing it for millenia.’ He grinned at them.

‘Millenia…’ said Ross. ‘But that would mean that you were…’

‘Oh yes,’ nodded Alex, seeing his meaning. ‘I am very old. Don’t let my youthful good looks deceive you.’

‘But this can’t be right!’ burst out Olivia. ‘You must be lying to us! I saw a vision of the Clarent Sword hidden in this chamber. One of us must be the one destined to wield it against Brax–not you!’

‘Yes,’ said Alex calmly, ‘this sort of thing often happens too. My quest to regather my equipment before I take Brax on again is often foreseen by astrologists, prophets, seers, soothsayers, visionaries and the like. Sometimes they even work out where my things are before Brax has risen and go and find them. I hide them in various places around Gard, you see, since I don’t like to travel with them all the time–they can get in the way a bit, and attract unwanted attention. I don’t really mind people borrowing them for a while, so long as they put them back when they’re finished, or hide them somewhere else. And so long as they don’t use them for any…nefarious purposes, of course. But people do get so disappointed when they think they’ve found one of my treasures and it’s not there because I need to use it myself. I’ve taken to leaving little notes for people to explain where it’s gone so that they understand.’

A memory flashed through Horatio’s mind. A memory of reaching a treasure chest hidden in a different cave and finding a handwritten letter inside.

‘The tetrachamber!’ he said. ‘You’re the same “Alex” who had already taken the treasure from the tetrachamber near Balamb!’

‘Oh, you’ve been there too, have you?’ said Alex. ‘You must be quite talented. Yes, I hid another of my essential magical items there for safekeeping–a very important one. You must have found my note explaining that I needed to use it. Anyway, it’s been lovely to chat, but I should really be retrieving the Clarent Sword now.’

Too flabbergasted to move, Horatio just watched the man turn and stroll over to the sword. Nobody else in the party moved either.

Alex simply walked up the sword, clasped the sword-hilt with two hands, and yanked it free of the pedestal in a single, smooth motion.

‘NOW!’ a furious voice screamed from somewhere above them. ‘HE’S GOT THE SWORD! GET HIM!’

Horatio spun round with the others.

Pouring through the cave mouth and down the slope towards them was a stream of monsters, including one they hadn’t yet fought before: a winged, blue and purple wyvern that flew above the charging monsters, making straight for them.

‘Oh crap,’ said Egea on all of their behalfs.

Something had changed in Horatio’s mind. If Alex really was the chosen hero of destiny, and it was his job to wield the Clarent Sword against Brax, then they should be helping him to do his job.

‘Protect Alex!’ he yelled, rallying the others to him. ‘To me! We must stand against the monsters!’

A group of monsters at the front of the stream reached them first.

Battle 4 (if possible please flip monsters and heroes horizontally so that this is a ‘back attack’ battle)

Boss battle (if possible please flip monsters and heroes horizontally so that this is a ‘back attack’ battle)