Aisha/Lore
Profile[edit]
Character Traits[edit]
A curious, excitable follower of Undine who's insistent on playing her music, much to Aldo's dismay.
Story[edit]
Character Quest 1[edit]
Beyond Reckoning
Aldo hears of a terrifying apparition from someone in Palsifal Palace. He resolves to sort it out before anyone else gets hurt.
Aldo overhears two ladies in Palsifal Palace discussing an apparition that has been tormenting the area. One of the ladies recounts: “One day, the sweetest boy in all of town went out to cool off… When he heard a blood-curdling screech. He was scared half to death, poor thing. And then… The very next moment, everything went black. He passed out!”
Aldo decides to check it out, despite the possibility of becoming the next victim. Luckily for the investigation, he suddenly hears a screeching noise on the Derismo Highroad and follows it. He runs into a crowd of people fawning over someone and tries to ignore it, but grows curious. He suddenly hears the screeching noise again and everyone around him faints. Aldo tries to stay conscious, but fails.
Once he regains consciousness, he finds the others still unconscious. He wakes them up, but they have no memories of what they were doing. He realizes that it was the apparition and follows the noise to Keruri Highroad. He feels the same pressure that made him lose consciousness again, but he is able to resist it.
He goes further ahead and finds a girl battling a monster. He offers his help and they defeat it together. After the battle, the girl introduces herself as Aisha. She is a musician and offers to play a song in honor of his courage. When she does, Aldo realizes that her songs are the source of the screeching sound.
She admits that she has been performing ever since she left the temple where she was born and raised. Because everyone loves music, she believes, she has been performing in order to help people. Aldo tells her that her music is dangerous and asks her to stop, but she says that she cannot lift her curse if she doesn’t help people. Aldo offers his help in lifting the curse and Aisha gladly accepts it.
Character Quest 2[edit]
Lament for the Dawn
Aldo resolves to journey with the apparition, Aisha. She wants to help people with her music, but…
In Lake Tiilen, Aldo and Aisha get to know each other, as she doesn’t seem to know anything about the world. Aldo tries to withstand her song again, but loses consciousness. A young man then approaches Aisha. Aisha to Aldo explains that she met the young man some time before she met Aldo, but completely forgot about him.
The young man becomes jealous of Aldo and accuses him of trying to steal Aisha from him. He appreciates Aisha’s music and believes that she will be the next “big thing”. However, Aisha whispers to Aldo that something is off about the young man, who left just as the monster they previously defeated appeared, as if he set it up on her.
The young man encourages Aisha to get more fans in Acteul, but she wants to stay away from the sanctuary of water and proposes to Ratle instead. The young man panics, but Aisha goes ahead, so Aldo and the young man have no choice but to follow her. Once they leave, two little boys appear, seemingly looking for her.
In Ratle, Aisha reveals that she is actually from Acteul, which is why she didn’t want to go there. The young man, who seems restless, wants to gather a crowd, but Aisha gets distracted by a baby, not being aware that humans actually look like that when they are born. She then keeps getting distracted until Aldo and the young man stop her.
Once she mentions her curse again, Aldo asks her to explain it. She recounts: “One day, I suddenly started to hate all these things, for no reason at all. It didn’t follow any pattern. Like, I’d hate eating or I’d hate wearing clothes. As soon as the impulse struck me, my body would simply refuse to move. It caused such trouble for everyone at the temple. I still don’t know what brought it on. I knew it was a curse, though. So I decided to pack my bags and leave the temple.”
Another lady then notices them and the young man claims that he cannot take it anymore and reveals himself as a demon spirit! Aisha doesn’t know what he is talking about and he calls her a being of “impure flame”, which is why her music creates such a terrifying sound.
The two boys who were looking for Aisha arrive and the spirit strikes one of them down. He then tells them to follow him to the Man-Eating Marsh to find out the truth and disappears, taking the unconscious boy with him. Aldo and Aisha give chase. The other boy wants to follow them, but the lady from earlier stops him, saying that it is too dangerous.
Aldo and Aisha find the spirit, who refuses to tell Aisha what she wants to know unless she beats it out of him. She quickly complies, much to his astonishment. Beaten, the spirit is about to tell her the truth, but the other boy arrives and sends the spirit flying. When the unconscious boy wakes up, they claim to be Aisha’s escorts, revealing themselves as minimanders, sent by Salamander himself.
They tell Aisha that she was born from his tail of flames, but ask her for proof of her power, since they want to make sure that she is the one they are supposed to protect. She offers to play music for them, as her instrument is the only thing she has, and they ask her to move to Nadara Volcano in case the spirit comes back. Although she knows that they are trying to prevent her from finding out what the spirit was going to tell her, she agrees to go with them.
After making sure that Aisha is fine, Aldo follows her to Nadara Volcano, although he is not thrilled to have to hear her perform again. They proceed to a previously unexplored area of the volcano and Aisha starts playing her instrument. Her music somehow makes the minimanders grow large and go berserk, forcing Aldo and Aisha to knock them back into their senses.
Seeing the influence that Aisha has had on them, the minimanders are convinced of her power, although it is chaotic, as if something else was mixed in it. Aisha tries to piece all of the clues about who she is together and resolves to go back to the temple of water and find out the whole truth.
Character Quest 3[edit]
Flame Dancing in the Dark
Curious about the effect her magic had on the minimanders, Aisha resolves to seek counsel.
Aldo and the minimanders wonder why Aisha was raised worshipping Undine, but she doesn’t have an answer either. They head to the temple, where the priests warmly welcome her back. The High Priestess is also happy to see her, but scolds Aisha for making them worry so much. She thanks Aldo for bringing her back, but he tells her that it was Aisha’s idea, as she wants to know the truth about herself.
The High Priestess recounts how they met her. Spotting a shady figure in front of the temple, the priests tried to follow them, but found a flame instead. They brought it back to the temple, where it transformed into a baby. The baby transformed into a talkative little girl soon after, barely passing any time as an infant, and they named her Aisha. She passed some days as a mischievous little girl, but soon became the Aisha that Aldo met. Strangely captivated by her instrument, a sacred artifact, she took it as her own and played it for the priests, the first victims of her music.
The High Priestess adds that everything happened in the course of two months only and reveals that Aisha is not cursed, but is simply going through the “terrible twos”, a natural phase in every child’s life. However, the mystery of Aisha’s origin remains. The High Priestess was able to learn from the spirits of the temple that the shady figure was a former spirit who committed a sin.
Indeed, he was a spirit who stole Salamander’s flame out of greed, breaking a taboo, and turned into a demon. Aisha realizes that the spirit that they fought was the former spirit that stole the flame and the minimanders confirm, but they wanted to shield her from the truth. The High Priestess explains that Aisha made the minimanders grow enormous and violent due to the chaos within her power.
Aisha takes a moment for herself before going to meet Salamander. Worried about her, Aldo goes after her, while the minimanders stay behind with the Head Priestess and the other priests, who have been eavesdropping everything. As Aisha’s mothers, they ask the minimanders all about their daughter in the outside world.
Aldo finds Aisha at Lake Tiilen and she is touched by his genuine worry about her. She reveals that she is feeling anxious for the fact that her power and music may be poison to the minimanders and the spirits. Aldo proposes that they go ask Salamander, but she is scared about how her power might affect him. Aldo reminds her of something she has said before: “This treasure chest full of unknowns may come with risks, but leaving it unopened is simply not an option. How I’ll feel once I’ve opened it… Is just a fun surprise! A gift for the future me!”
Aisha is convinced by Aldo and proposes a song to thank him for his support, but he rejects her offer, so they just head back to the temple, where she tells her mothers to wait for her as she goes to find out the truth about herself. After the goodbyes, the minimanders take Aisha to Purgatory, but don’t escort her to Salamander, as she asks them for a secret favor first.
After wandering around and exploring Purgatory, Aldo and Aisha finally meet with Salamander, who wants Aisha to act as his representative. He explains that the flame that was stolen from his tail died when it left Purgatory, but was rekindled thanks to the dispersed souls of spirits who couldn’t maintain their form in the mortal world. Aisha then acquired a human form and became her own person, yet possessed the same level of power that Salamander had when he was still alive.
Salamander is asking Aisha to protect the spirits in the mortal realm. However, Aisha tells him about her effects on the minimanders and rejects his proposal. However, Salamander reveals that his flames cannot be impure and the reason her power is difficult is because she is not in control of herself.
Aisha giggles and resolves to tune her power up by facing Salamander. When the torrent of power flowing through her body changes, she decides to verify it with music and starts playing again. Unfortunately, the music is still so bad that even Salamander is at a loss for words.
Undine suddenly arrives, shocked by the terrible sound she heard. She feels the uncontrollable storm within her and Aldo and Aisha help her calm her power with another battle. After, once the chaos within Undine has calmed, Aisha’s music hasn’t gotten any better. She is still missing the last string to play a whole new sound.
The minimanders then come back, having apprehended the former spirit. Aisha asks him why he stole Salamander’s flame and he admits that he was scared of his body slowly crumbling away, since little spirits like him weren’t able to maintain their bodies after the Four Great Elementals vanished.
Aisha acknowledges that she could feel his fear and anger when she first met him and asks Salamander if he can do anything for him. But even he cannot. Suddenly, the former spirit strikes Aldo and the minimanders down, wanting to steal Aldo’s life force and live longer. Aisha then starts playing her music again. It is initially bad, but turns good, bringing Aldo to tears and transforming the former spirit back into a spirit.
Aisha is happy that her music was able to return the former spirit’s form. He thanks her and Salamander for giving him another chance. He apologizes, but Aisha is happy that he stole the flame, as it allowed her to be born.
Both Salamander and Undine give her their blessing to stay in either one of their temples to watch over the spirits, but Aisha declines. She reasons that the spirits can survive without someone leading them, but she will travel the world with her trusty instrument by her side, dedicating the music flowing within her to all who live in it. This way, her music will reach the spirits, wherever they are.
The minimanders decide to join her and Aisha officially joins Aldo’s party. In order to celebrate, Aisha plays one of her old songs, which makes Aldo’s whole body numb. She then thinks of a way to improve it even further. All the spirits make an excuse to flee, leaving Also alone.