Honor the Forsaken

**Honor the Forsaken**is a Story Arc of the the Exteria Multiverse. It takes place in Interra, in the Land of Mu, and follows the perspective of the military-minded Leonida di Prava.

## Main Arc

### A Strange Arrival

In a World War II, as the Axis are losing the war, Leonida di Prava, daughter to a well-known Italian general, is escorted to safety in Japan in a submarine. However, while they are traveling, something attacks the submarine, making her lose consciousness. When she wakes up, she is on a strange island, surrounded by the corpses of the soldiers who brought her there. Her first vision is that of a man clad in red observing her, then quickly disappearing.

Leonida begins to explore, and while wandering in the mountains, she encounters a mysterious knight-errant named Yun. The kind and polite warrior escords Leonida to a nearby village, although Leonida senses something is off about him. Yun then quickly disappears in the snow, and Leonida finds herself in a village who mistakes her from a knight of the **Noble Houses**. She is asked to fight an Akan threatening the village, and despite not understanding, bound by honor, accepts.

Leonida finds a monstrous beast hungering for human flesh in the nearby woods, and attempts to fight it. Despite her physical prowess, the monster regenerates too quickly for her to finish it. Thankfully, Alastor Belten, a samurai-like warrior, arrives and dispatches the beast in a few superhuman sword slashes.

### To the Cerestia Domain

Alastor explains to Leonida that he is from one of the **Three Noble Families**, who have been Awakened by ancient imperial treasures, gaining enough power to defeat the beasts known as Akan. He tells her to go to the capital city of the island, **Muin**. There, she will be able to prove herself and earn a title in one of the Families.

Leonida goes towards Muin, and encounters a young man, Safir, on the road. The young peasant explains that his family was eaten by Akan and he seeks the power to avenge them. Leonida accepts to help him and finds the capital. However, she is disappointed to see that the Land of Mu is an aristrocracy with the Noble Houses ruling in luxury and power, served by the peasants who have no choice but to blindly obey those who protect them.

Leonida encounters the three leaders of the Ruling Families : the silent Stella Nialta of the Tiger, the wise and playful Garune Belten and the current emperor, the noble and determined Regel Cerestia. Leonida asks Regel to take her as a Noble but he wishes to test her beforehand. Upon hearing that she encountered Yun, he tells her that **Yun Cerestia** is an ancient Cerestia hero, dead ten years ago. Leonida asks for her trial to prove that Yun is still alive, which Regel accepts.

### Loss and Ascent

Leonida, accompanied by Safir which Stella has Awakened, returns to the mountains, looking for Yun. However, her search is cut short : the village she first visited is now destroyed, overrun with Akan. At the center, Yun stands, calmly eating the mayor's heart. He tells her he is an Akan Lord, a king of monsters, and tells her not to come after him. He defeats Safir in a single non-lethal slash then disappears. Leonida theorizes that despite Yun's words and actions, he is not truly an enemy.

She returns to Regel with Yun's signature coat and Safir's word, which are enough for Regel to offer Leonida her Awakening. Now **Leonida Cerestia di Prava**, she is acknowledged by the Houses. However, some of the most close-minded members of the Cerestia House, such as Niven Cerestia, contest her victory. Niven and Leonida duel in an impressive contest of power and speed, despite NIven's sister Ilina's protests. The battle ends in a tie, Niven impressed by Leonida's battle prowess and going away.

### Akan Lords Emerge

Leonida begins hunting Akan for the sake of Mu. She quickly finds that many Akan are born from the experiments of doctor Ophelius Chiro. The good doctor explains he experiments on a way to Awaken people in order to shake the existing hierarchy. In order to accomplish that, he uses the substance within Akan's bodies in order to increase others' strength. While effective, the treatment causes patients to turn into Akan under stressful conditions.

Despite Ophelius's lack of ethics, Leonida spares him and considers him an ally with similar aims to hers : to let the people protect themselves. She returns to the capital, and on the way, encounters the man clad in red once again. He introduces himself as Kabuki and warns her that great destruction is about to ensue.

Great destruction ensues indeed. The very night after the warning, the priestess Ilina is kidnapped by a strange man in black, Avici, another Akan Lord. Leonida confronts him, but even Awakened, she has no hope to defeat the immensely powerful beastlike man. She survives the confrontation, her body torn apart by Avici's assault, and only Stella's help as well as the healing properties of her Awakened body save her from a certain death. Avici has kidnapped successfully the young girl.

### The Power of Akan

Feeling humiliated and dishonored, Leonida settles on Ophelius's help. She asks him to experiment on her with miasma injections, and he asks for time in order to finish his current experiment. However, before he can, Yun makes another appearance and forcefully takes Leonida to another location. There, he tells her not to do that, warning her that the corruption of an Akan is worse than death. Leonida stubbornly insists on the experiment. Yun has no choice to save her than to poison her himself with miasma. Leonida quickly becomes comatose.

She wakes up three days after in a small house in the mountains, near Yun. She learns that Yun was once a hero who fell in battle against the Akan Lord Kala and was revived as an Akan Lord himself due to his Miasma-infected wounds. Driven by a terrible hunger, he returned home and ate his wife and child's heart in his sleep. Unable to die for ten years, Yun was forced to kill a victim each day until the day someone would kill him.

### Against Avici

Yun teaches Leonida to master the small dose of Miasma in her then guides her towards Avici's palace. There, the Akan Lord is preparing to sacrifice Ilina in a terrible ritual that would destroy the whole island. Avici tells Leonida that on Mu, those who die without a proper burial rise as Akan, and that only nobles can afford such a burial ; that is, because Awakened people rise as Akan Lords instead. Avici intends on performing a burial on the whole island, killing everyone, himself including, and ending the circle of corruption.

An epic battle ensues : Leonida fights Avici one on one, but the latter transformes into a gigantic beast which threatens Muin : Leonida with Regel and Stella's help manages to land a killing blow by throwing her sword through Avici's wing who is then killed by lightning. The threat has been defeated.

### A Final Darkness

At least it seemed so. Leonida finds an unconscious Ophelius and a wounded Yun. Yun explains that Ophelius's treasure was stolen by Kabuki, the last Akan Lord. Together, Leonida and Yun dash towards Kabuki, who explains he, like Leonida, is a foreigner from another land. Disgusted by this world's hypocrisy, he plans on overruning it with Akan, thanks to the stone he got from Ophelius. The gem, he says, is one of the four fragments of a Philosopher's Stone who once protected Mu but was used in excess and broke, causing the Miasma influx.

Leonida and Yun manage to overcome and overpower Kabuki and his legions of Akan, boosted by the stone, even as Kabuki turns into a gigantic beast. Kabuki dies, with Yun heavily wounded. He then asks Leonida to finish him in a last battle. She regretfully complies, ending the Akan threat with Yun's life. Yun confesses his love for Leonida before finally dying.

Leonida returns to the castle with the last gem, and assembles it with the three other imperial treasures to form a Phliosopher's stone. Faced with the choice of resurrecting Yun and purifying the land, she opts for the latter in a last act of sacrifice. As her only demand, she asks to be tasked with the training of new Noble warriors, something Regel gladly accepts.

## Other Arcs

### Lonan's Tale

Michael Dawne and Lara Lane later encounter Leonida as she trains the recruits. An influx of Venimi on the land of Mu makes it so the three must team up in order to face the monsters even as they wear Yun's appearance in order to torment Leonida.

Before departing, Michael gives Leonida one of his red Conqueror Blades which hold the power to raise the dead. Leonida, who cannot believe this, places this sword next the tomb of Yun, now considered a hero by the people of Mu. Yun is resurrected, the miasma within him weakened by the use of the Philosopher's stone. Now almost human again, Yun allows himself to find happiness once again at Leonida's side.

## Characters

* Leonida di Prava
* Regel Cerestia
* Niven Cerestia
* Garune Belten
* Stella Nialta
* Safir Nialta
* Ophelius Chiro
* Yun
* Kabuki
* Avici

## Trivia

* This storyline is the first that introduces the concept of **Miasma**.