AEHU/Plot/Plot Sketch Chapter 29

"Sleep, the Beloved Children

Wittel & co. (now with Dream Schala as guest and a recovering Magus in tow) seek out Artemis and find her at Giant's Claw, now confronting Dalton to retake the Levantine. There's a humerous scene in which Dalton's shadowy master appears and blames Dalton for causing the very situation that Dalton is here to solve in the first place: Raqh going after the Masamune is what caused Mastermune to form. The shadow master is placed in the awkward position of fighting off Artemis when she lunges at Dalton. Dalton says not to worry, that everything will still go according to plan.

Artemis joins the party to battle the cult lieutenants assigned to Dalton, and Dalton surprisingly thanks them and hands over the blade. Raqh arrives with his Guardian cult members just as this occurs, so he knows Dalton double-crossed him. Raqh flees since he's aware of Levantine's properties.

Wittel & co. track Raqh down and confront him. Human Glenn wields the Levantine, disabling the Masamune in a battle that's highly emotional for him. After defeating the Mastermune fusion beast that pops out of the blade in a last-ditch effort to protect their master (presumed by Masa and Mune to be Cyrus), Glenn uses the Levantine to leave them in such a weakened condition as to be rendered "asleep" for the foreseeable future (Robo calculates that they'll be awake again by the year 2400AG). Artemis wants to kill Raqh and thus release and terminate Gladus, but Brione swoops in to defend Raqh and Wittel stops Artemis. Dream Schala observes that Raqh has been rendered impotent and the party heads back to their ship, everyone except Artemis and Robo thinking everything's sort of fine and dandy now. However, just as they leave Dalton and his shadow master mysteriously walk up to Raqh.