2. Archer Knight

	“How do we start?” Ryan asked.
	“First, I call the Three Lights to assembly,” Seiya said.  
“Yaten, Taiki, it’s time.”  Two more men showed up: A tall, 
black-haired one, and s short one with white hair.
	“Wow,” Ryan said, “all three of you.  This is amazing.”
	“We will take you to the Astral Plane,” Taiki said.
	“Once there, we will follow you and tell you about any 
strange things you see there,” Yaten added.
	“And once you find the exit, you will be returned to the 
mortal plane,” Seiya concluded.
	“But how will I know I have the right exit?” Ryan asked.
	“Everyone exits the Astral Plane where they are destined,” 
Taiki said.  “You will know your place when you find it.”
	“This is why we cannot guide you,” Yaten said.
	“You must find your own path.  We can only help your 
understanding,” Seiya said.
	“I’m sure all of this will make some kind of sense to me 
someday,” Ryan said, resigning himself to his fate.
	Seiya, Yaten, and Taiki surrounded Ryan and held hands.  The 
three lights began to concentrate and glowed white - their glow 
becoming more and more powerful until it completely overcame 
Ryan’s sight, ending in a flash that stunned Ryan’s mind and 
shook his very soul.
	He was standing in the midst of a group of soldiers.  Yaten, 
Taiki, and Seiya were nowhere to be seen.
	“You are now on the Astral Plane,” Taiki’s voice said in 
Ryan’s head.
	“We have no bodies, so we cannot join you physically, only 
spiritually,” Yaten said.
	If I’m the only one who is here physically, Ryan thought, 
then who are all of these soldiers?
	“These soldiers are out of your mind,” Seiya answered.  
“Everyone who comes to the Astral Plane imposes his own being 
onto it.  If you were someone else right now, the scenery would 
most likely be much different.”
	“So what do I do?” Ryan asked.
	One of the soldiers, clad in the uniform of New Rome’s royal 
guard, turned to him with a confused look in his eyes.  
“General?” he asked Ryan.
	“You don’t need to speak to talk to us,” Yaten said.
	Oh yeah, he thought, I forgot.  Out loud, he said, “Um...what 
is our current status, soldier?”
	“Sentries report the enemies’ camp to be just over the next 
rise,” the soldier reported, gesturing to a low hill to the 
north.  “Permission to speak freely, sir?”
	“Please do,” Ryan said, hoping to know a little more of what 
was going on.
	“I think we should rout them now, before they do any more 
damage, sir.”  There was an almost crazed look in the soldiers 
eyes when he suggested attacking.
	“Hold up, soldier,” Ryan said, something sparked inside of 
him.  “I’m not going to order an attack without seeing the enemy 
for myself.”
	“You are correct, sir.  Attacking blindly would be a mistake, 
sir.  We must look for traps first, sir?”
	Ryan absently nodded.  That wasn’t the real reason Ryan had 
had for not attacking, but any delay of battle was welcome.  
“Bring me my horse, soldier,” he ordered.  The soldier bowed 
stiffly and ran off in what Ryan guessed was the direction of the 
hitching post.
	Within moments, another soldier arrived leading a large 
chestnut colored stallion, fully armed for battle.  “You wanted 
your horse,” the new soldier asked.  Ryan nodded and added a 
brief grunt of assent.
	“I’m going to the top of that hill to scout,” Ryan announced.  
A few of the soldiers stirred a turned toward the hill as if to 
join him.  “The rest of you stay here.”  There were murmurs of 
protest, but Ryan raised his hand to silence them.  He had a 
hunch that what he’d see up there, he wouldn’t need a guard to 
protect him from.  He rode off, leaving his stunned troops behind 
him.
	He reached the top of the hill and dismounted.  Just as he 
had suspected.  He saw a small village, bustling with mew, women, 
and children.  Nowhere did Ryan see a weapon.
	“How did you know?” Seiya asked in Ryan’s mind.
	“The soldier,” Ryan replied.  “He was speaking out of a 
fervent anger.  I could tell by his tone and the look in his eyes 
that he really wanted to destroy what was on the other side of 
this hill.  Anyone that eager to kill, for whatever reason, 
should not be trusted.”
	“Impressive,” Yaten muttered.
	“I told you guys he was the one,” Taiki said.
	Ryan returned to the troops.  “Sheathe your weapons, men,” he 
ordered.  “There is nothing over that hill but a village of 
innocent people.  Where is the soldier who spoke to me...oh yeah, 
and the scouts who informed him of what was on the other side of 
that hill?”
	The soldier who had brought him his horse stepped forward.  
Ryan nodded to him to speak.  “They all rode off when you left up 
the hill, sir.  They went into the forest there,” he said, 
pointing to the fringe of a forest that ran along the side of the 
hill.  It looked like it covered both sides of the hill.
	“Unsheathe your weapons, men,” Ryan commanded.  “We have a 
village to save.”  He spurred his warhorse forward, drew his 
sword, and yelled, “Charge!”
	There was a distant rumble of thunder in the distance, which 
was soon echoed by the stampeding battalion.  The first fires had 
already been set in the village when Ryan’s soldiers arrived.  
Within minutes, the five rebels were caught and bound.
	The chief of the village came up to Ryan.  “These men are 
wearing your uniforms, but I assume they weren’t ordered to 
attack us,” he said as the fires were being extinguished by a 
gentle rain and the efforts of a large group of villagers.
	“No,” Ryan said.  “I apologize for the behavior of these 
rebels.  I leave their punishment to you, since it was your 
village they attacked.”
	“Thank you,” the chief said, “but all I ask is that these men 
be removed from our village and taken far away where they can do 
no more harm to our people.  Any other punishments seen fit by 
your customs are yours to deal out.”
	“I will do as you desire,” Ryan said, the diplomacy ingrained 
in him since he was a child taking over.  He turned to his men 
and selected out ten.  “I want the ten of you to take these 
traitors back to camp and have then secured and guarded until we 
can get someone to take them back home.  They need to be tried 
for what they have done.”  The soldiers readily agreed.  “Is 
there anything else I or my men can do for you?” he asked the 
chief.
	“You can join me in my home for dinner,” was the reply.
	“Of course,” Ryan said, following him through the streets of 
the village.  The chief opened the door to his hut.  Instead of 
furnishings, the doorway revealed a swirling vortex.
	“That is your exit,” Seiya said.
	Did I win? he asked in his head.
	“I cannot say for certain,” Seiya replied,” but my guess 
would be that you aced this test.”
	Ryan thanked the chief for holding the door for him and 
stepped through the portal.
	On the other side, there was a cave of ice.  Ryan shivered as 
the cold hit him.  There were no doors or windows in the large 
room, only a hole in the ceiling for air and a thin beam of light 
to enter.  Along the wall of the room were twelve oddly shaped 
stone statues, placed at equal intervals.  In the center, a 
pedestal with a golden crystal floating above it was surrounded 
by three skeletons.  The crystal itself was directly under the 
opening in the ceiling, catching the beam of light and lighting 
the room with the glow it produced.
	“This is our final resting place,” Seiya said audibly to 
Ryan.  An apparition of Seiya slowly faded into sight, standing 
over one of the skeletons.  Yaten and Taiki soon did the same, 
standing over their skeletons.
	“This,” Seiya continued, “is the Imperium Golden Crystal.  
Our final mission as Sailor Senshi was to retrieve it and bring 
it back to use against the Doom Phantom’s army.”
	“And you got here with it just moments too late,” Ryan 
speculated.
	“No, Wonderboy,” Yaten said, “we weren’t even close.”
	“It took us twenty-seven years to find the crystal,” Taiki 
added.
	Seiya continued.  “Our own princess, Kakyuu, told us to 
remain on Earth with the Imperium Golden Crystal and protect it 
until it was needed.  When we knew we wouldn’t live much longer, 
we created this cave.  Then we passed on.”
	“That sucks,” Ryan said.  “And here I thought that I was 
screwed by destiny.”
	“We did our job though,” Yaten said haughtily.  “The crystal 
has been safe for all these years, and now there’s a need for 
it.”
	“Our spirits were reawakened,” Taiki said, “and these statues 
were formed by the crystal, both less than a week ago.”
	“So we searched for worthy candidates for the new powers, and 
we found you,” Seiya said.  “Go to the crystal.”
	Ryan obeyed and an instinctive force caused him to place his 
hand into the beam of light coming from the ceiling.  A golden 
stream of light shot out and hit one of the statues, an armored 
centaur with a bow and arrow.  Where the light hit, the statue 
became flesh, the affected area growing as it absorbed more of 
the light, until the stone was no more.  The centaur’s eyes 
crackled and arced with electricity, as did his arrows.  His hide 
was the same chestnut color as the stallion Ryan had ridden in 
the Astral Plane, but the armor was a metallic yellow, gleaming 
even in the meager light of the cave.
	“I am Saggitarius, the archer,” the centaur said.  “You have 
proven yourself worth of my power by showing a great capacity for 
leadership.  You have show that you know to watch your own people 
as you would the enemy in order to anticipate how your troops 
will work, or if the will work at all.  You can call upon my 
powers by saying ‘Saggitarius Power.’”  Saggitarius held out his 
hand and opened it.  In his palm lay a golden ring - the gleaming 
yellow stone in it bearing the double arrow sign of Saggitarius.  
Ryan raised his hand to eye level and the ring floated from 
Saggitarius and descended onto Ryan’s ring finger, fitting 
perfectly. 
	“Until the Zodiac Princess arrives, you must protect the 
Golden Imperium Crystal’s hiding place and lead the Stellar 
Senshi against the evil that has recently come to reside on the 
Earth.”
	“Lead the Stellar Senshi?” Ryan protested.  “But I’m no...”
	Ryan was cut off by Saggitarius, who, at that moment, stepped 
right into Ryan’s body.  There was a bright light as the human 
and centaur merged, a rush of energy flooding into Ryan, coursing 
and throbbing inside of him, every heartbeat an electrified pulse 
of power, energizing every fiber, every cell, every atom of his 
body.
	Ryan ceased giving off light and the rush of power subsided 
finally, leaving only the exhilaration of the merging.  He 
realized that he was breathing heavily and his heart was racing.
	“Congratulations,” Yaten said.  “You are now part of the 
team, a Stellar Senshi.”
	“Do you know how to use your powers?” Taiki asked.
	“I think so,” Ryan said.  “I have some new things in my head 
that weren’t there before.”
	“Saggitarius’ knowledge,” Seiya explained.
	“Is that why I’m craving a bag of oats right now?”

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