This is the sequel to my earlier work, "Mars Fire Ignite". If you haven't read 
that one, you probably should. Some parts of this come from my first work. 
Also, if you are wondering where this fits in in the Sailor Moon timeline, 
don't. It doesn't fit anywhere in that universe. The Inner Scouts are around 17 
years old right now, some two to three years after "Mars Fire Ignite". 
Disclaimer-wise, Sailor Moon and her friends are the property of Naoko Takeuchi, 
and they're copyrighted by her, and to a lesser extent, DiC (those manglers!). 
Also, there is a good bit of Forgotten Realms flavor in here, and they belong to 
TSR (or Wizards of the Coast, depending on how you look at it). Most of the 
other things spawned from my own imagination, so I'd like credit for such. 
Enjoy! 
Comments, criticisms, compliments to meech@mindspring.com 
------------------------------------- 
Quest for the Silver Imperium Crystal
by Soumitra Choudhury
Chapter 1: Falling Stars
-------------------------------------
Chaszmyr woke to a shrieking sound that got louder as it neared. Outside the 
quaint inn that his friends and him had stayed the night in, something streaked 
from the sky, akin to a falling silver star. As he witnessed in wonder, the 
object fell with a crash in the hills several miles away, north of the small 
village. 
'Hmm,' he thought, 'that looks interesting. Maybe we should take a look.' Before 
he had completed the muse, he had wrapped his cloak about his slender form, 
strapped on his weapon belt, and focused his keen dark elven instincts to the 
task ahead. With all the noise of a faint whisper, Chaszmyr padded over to the 
room's wooden door and silently exited. 
It was with little surprise that he found his lovely partner, Xune, already 
waiting for him in the hallway, bedecked in her gleaming chain mail, a dark 
cloak, and a magnificent bastard sword strapped to her back, the counterweight 
gemstone on its hilt glowing a faint silver. She threw an endearing smile his 
way and whispered, "Shall we be off?" 
Wondering to himself how he had managed to fall in love with this perfect 
female, Chaszmyr took the lead down the stairs, through the taproom, and out 
into the cool, crisp night, turning north in the direction of the fallen star. 
With complete silence, the duo skirted past the guard patrol that scouted the 
woods for danger, and traversed their way through the forest, fully sure of each 
step. Their elven vision picking away the heat patterns of their surroundings, 
it was a simple matter to travel in a darkened forest at night without the worry 
of tripping over one's toes. 
An hour later, they crested a hill, and found the large crater that marked the 
fallen item's destination. At the bottom of the crater, a large gemstone 
illuminated the earth with a pearl white light. 
"How very interesting?" Xune whispered in wonder. 
"Is it dangerous?" inquired her partner. 
She didn't answer, but closed her eyes instead, murmuring what sounded like a 
request. Upon her brow, the silver and diamond circlet she wore glittered 
unnaturally. "It's something magical, but I don't think it's evil." Before 
Chaszmyr could stop her, Xune leaped down the crater slope and stood before the 
gem. 
"Do you think it's wise to touch it?" he asked a moment later when he had caught 
up to her. 
She flashed him an impish grin. "There's pretty much one way to find out," and 
she reached down to place a finger on it. 
The gem pulsed once, and Xune stiffened, as a barrage of images bombarded her 
mind... 
... a delicately beautiful kingdom of crystal, with a blue-green planet hovering 
in the night sky like a moon... 
... a young human woman with silken blonde hair put up in the most interesting 
hairstyle Xune had ever seen: ponytails reaching to her calves, sprouting from 
two balls of hair on her head... 
... a group of human teenage girls wearing daring outfits, all similar but for 
color, each flinging magical powers: fire, ice, lightning, earth, water, light, 
and time... 
... an army of monstrous creatures descending upon the crystal kingdom, flames 
of destruction arcing into the sky... 
... and then, Xune took her finger away, a mixture of dread and peace mingling 
in her mind. 
"Are you alright? You look a bit shaken," Chaszmyr said, placing a comforting 
hand on her shoulder. 
Shaking her head a bit to clear out the confusion, Xune picked up the cool 
multi-faceted gem. It was clearly bigger than most, almost the size of her fist. 
This time, there was no barrage of images. "No, it's not dangerous. It sent me a 
bunch of pictures, though, of places and people I've never seen before." She 
held it up for him to try. 
Implicitly trusting her, Chaszmyr touched the crystal, and reeled slightly at 
the multitude of things he saw. When it was over, he blinked, and touched it 
again, albeit hesitantly. Nothing happened. He raised an eyebrow. "Well, what do 
we do with it?" 
Xune shrugged. "Take it with us? It won't do any good lying out here, and maybe 
Eilistraee will grant me insight on its workings." 
"And perhaps Szaravel can help too." 
Xune frowned at the mention of their adopted daughter-turn-sorceress. 
"Szaravel's too young to know much about researching items of power," she 
muttered in a neutral tone. 
Feeling that he had accidentally trod upon troubled grounds, Chaszmyr let the 
matter go. He knew Xune still wasn't comfortable of Szaravel's chosen 
profession, especially since Xune didn't trust Szaravel's mentor, the witch 
Zildra. Mentally sighing, he replied instead, "We should be heading back. It's a 
long way back to Shadowdale, and I haven't slept much." 
Pocketing the gemstone in a belt pouch, Xune decided to take the lead this time. 

*****
As it stood, the couple could not discover the secret to the magical stone, nor 
would Xune agree to take it to Szaravel to be investigated magically. Xune vowed 
not to take a step near the witch's cavernous home deep in the Elven Woods. 
And so, they kept it stashed away in the treasure vault of their home, an 
extra-dimensional room created for Xune by a wizard decades ago. And their it 
lay, forgotten, for several months. 
*****
Chaszmyr was pleasantly tired. The daily patrol he forced himself to make had 
been invigorating, and curiously interesting. In the mysterious woods that had 
once flourished with the surface elves he was so unfamiliar with, he had 
witnessed a number of odd occurrences. 
At one point, a flock of birds took flight, several of them blinking in and out 
of visibility. A tree had carried on a merry conversation with him about the 
social conditions of the Spiderhaunt Woods, a forest some thirty to forty miles 
northeast of the Elven Woods. One of his scimitars, the diamond-bladed Lyonesse, 
had flickered between bursts of light, occasionally blinding him momentarily. 
Normally, Lyonesse didn't glow until the onset of night, and then it would fade 
away as dawn arose. It was as if Nature had gone awry. 
It wasn't until he entered Xune's Grove that he became truly worried. Breaking 
into a run, Chaszmyr sprinted for his stone home, a dwarven-crafted structure 
that had been enspelled to be protected from all types of flame. 
It was shifting to random colors, something it had never done before. 
Not only that, a faint humming sound was emanating from it, along with a 
piercing shaft of white light that shot up the chimney to the heavens, something 
else that had never happened before. 
Nearby, he sensed more than saw the weeping figure in the beautifully tended 
grove. Turning, he caught Xune crying softly on the edge of the fountain, a 
fountain that usually spouted a small geyser of crystal clear water, but now lay 
dry as dead bone. 
Rushing over, fearing the worst, he cried, "What is it?" What's wrong?" 
Xune raised her tear stained face to her lover, and through repeated sobs, she 
mumbled, "She's gone. I can't feel her anymore." Then she renewed her crying 
with greater strength. 
"Who? Szaravel? She's here?" 
She shook her head. "I... I don't feel Eilistraee." 
A moment of stunned silence ran through the grove. Chaszmyr gently took Xune in 
his arms and hugged her close, stroking her shining hair soothingly. 'The 
Goddess? Gone? What's going on?' he thought to himself, the tingle of fear 
crawling through him. 
Hundreds of feet away, his home continued to shift in a myriad of colors, 
humming and emitting that white light. 
*****
Three months, and still nothing. 
On the good side, no attacks had hampered them in that time. 
On the bad side, they still couldn't find the Silver Imperium Crystal. 
Ami woke up bleary-eyed. It had been a long night again, reprogramming her data 
computer to search for other parameters on the Crystal. Every other set she had 
used had been for naught, and she was starting to run out of ideas. 
She had no doubt that the Crystal had survived destruction, for when she had 
first scanned for it, she had found the residual trail it had left in its wake. 
Horrifyingly, though, the trail had led out beyond the solar system, and past 
that, the computer couldn't track it anymore. It boggled her mind that it had 
been able to search even that far. 
Finding ways to boost the already considerable power of the computer had come up 
blank, but she tried nonetheless. Without the Crystal, many things would go 
wrong in the future. 
Quite possibly, there would be no future. 
Scrapping away the quilt, Ami slipped on her slippers and stumbled into the 
shower, hoping a good bath would rejuvenate her depleting mood. 
She came out, a good fifteen minutes later, a towel wrapped around her body, one 
about her head, and a toothbrush jutting from her mouth. When she returned to 
her room to decide what to wear, Ami noticed her alarm clock had gone off. 
'Funny, I thought I had turned it off.' She hit the alarm reset, but it wouldn't 
stop. 'Wait a minute! That's not the alarm clock!' 
Ami twirled around, her towel loosening slightly, the one on her head slipping 
off. Upon her tidy study desk, amidst clean stacks of calculations, her small 
Mercurian computer beeped jovially, its display screen flashing to an unknown 
beat. 
A jolt of movement brought her to the computer (and left her towel behind her), 
and what she saw widened her eyes to saucers, dropped her mouth to her knees, 
and vaporized her imminent depression in a ray of hope and wonder. 
*****
"IT'S HOW FAR AWAY?!?" Mina exclaimed, astonished at Ami's proclamation. 
The blue-haired girl sighed, and pulled out a piece of paper. She had foreseen 
this confusion, the same that was written on Serena's, Lita's, Haruka's, 
Reenie's, Diana's and Hotaru's faces. The rest seemed to understand the 
magnitude of distances. 
"Well, it's like this," Ami began in a tone reminiscent of a patient teacher, 
"Here's Earth." She drew a minute circle in the bottom left hand corner of the 
paper. "Here is the origin of the Silver Imperium Crystal's signal." She drew 
another circle in the opposite corner of the paper. "And the distance between 
the two is-" She connected the two circles with a straight line and wrote above 
it, in great bold letters and numbers: 70,000 LIGHT YEARS. Smirking in a rare 
display of dry wit, she added, "Any questions?" 
"How are we going to get it?" asked Michiru, waving away a curly lock of 
turquoise hair. "That's quite a distance, even for a Sailor Teleport." 
Ami nodded. "It is a great distance, and I'm not too sure we could make it 
without aid. The energy we would need is fantastically huge." She shrugged 
noncommittally. "Other than that, though, there is no reason it shouldn't work. 
I have the coordinates of the signal, and we already know that the computer can 
help direct our Teleport." 
"But we don't have a power source that big. The Crystal was it," argued Haruka. 
"Even then, we don't know anything about the place it landed on." 
"Oh, um, that's not entirely true," Ami replied. "The signal has been sending 
complete data of the planet's conditions. Apparently, the planet is not too 
different from Earth. The only really difference I could discover it that there 
is a higher concentration of magic in existence." 
Rei's, Luna's and Artemis' ears perked up. "The world has magic?" asked the 
shrine maiden, a hint of interest creeping into her tone. 
Ami nodded. 
"Well then, we need to summon up a power source that can get us over their," 
Serena said. 
Rei stood up with something akin to weary resignation. "I can give us the power 
we need, but for a distance that great, I won't be able to support more than... 
say, five of us." 
Ami gave her a ghost of a smile,already having guessed Rei would be the power 
they sought. Serena seemed mildly distraught at the number of people who could 
come with her. Haruka looked positively furious. The rest just looked at her, 
some blankly, some blandly, one mysteriously. 
"Well then, I guess that means the Inner Scouts will be going," Mina said 
cheerfully. 
Haruka whirled on the blonde. "What do you mean, the Inner Scouts? What are we 
going to do while you're gone? And what if you don't come back? The Outer Scouts 
should be the ones to go." She leveled Rei with a cold glare. "It's mighty 
convenient that you can only take five people. How do you know for sure?" The 
sarcasm dripped like venom. 
Rei's temper flared to match that of the older scout. "I'm not required to 
justify myself to you, Haruka, but if you think I can do more, I hope you'll 
give me the courtesy of dredging up my atoms from across the universe when I 
burnout from exhaustion, not to mention the princess' and anyone else who is 
with me!" 
The two stared many daggers into each other before Serena could step forward and 
separate them. "Stop this, both of you! I won't have you fighting over who gets 
to go with us." She turned to Rei. "Which of us will HAVE to go?" 
"Well, you because of the Crystal, Ami because she has the computer, and me 
because I'll be providing the power." As she sat back down, she threw out, "I 
can only power five because that's the number I'm most used to. I already know 
the nuances of the Inner Scouts, so it would be most helpful if Mina and Lita 
were the last two." 
Haruka growled softly, but Serena held up one hand. "No Haruka, she's right. 
There's no point in splitting up the Inner Scouts. We work well together, better 
than the two groups combined." She didn't mean it to be accusatory, but Michiru 
and Hotaru flinched nonetheless. "As to what you're going to do, you're going to 
protect Earth, and my daughter." 
Reenie opened her mouth to argue, but, in a rare moment of maturity, she closed 
it and resigned herself to the predicament. Hotaru gripped her hand in her own. 
"She is correct, Haruka," came the voice of Setsuna, strangely misplaced in the 
discussion. The Guardian of Time wasn't prone to very many words. "We'll need to 
keep a watch out for anyone or anything that might decide to take advantage of 
the princess' absence, or, for that matter, Rei's." She pointedly fixed an 
unreadable stare upon the sorceress. 
Serena thanked Setsuna for her input, but the older woman waved it aside. "Make 
no mistake, Serena. I am not pleased at this turn of events. I would be much 
happier if you stayed here and let others retrieve the Crystal, but I know you 
well enough to realize the futility of that." 
Haruka backed down with much disgust; she knew when to quit. 
"So, when do we leave?" Lita asked, somewhat eagerly. The tall brunette was a 
little tired of the boredom since Nym's attack, and this sounded like just the 
kind of excitement she needed. 'Maybe I can find a new recipe on this world.' 
Ami coughed slightly. "Um, what are we going to tell our parents?" 
This got a few worried glances, mainly from the Inner Scouts. Haruka looked a 
bit too smug. 
After a moment of thinking, Rei replied, "Well, I could, um, suggest to them 
that we're, uh, going on vacation." She avoided many gazes with extreme 
embarrassment. 
"Will it hurt?" Mina inquired. 
"Of course not! What kind of stupid question is that!?!" the sorceress yelled 
indignantly. The girls smirked at her. 
Serena nodded. "Then Rei will 'suggest' to our parents that we're on vacation. I 
will expect the Outer Scouts to cover us while we're gone. 
Michiru smiled reassuringly, playfully nudging Haruka, who grumbled in 
irritation. 
The princess grew grim. "Then we leave in two days." 
*****
Two weeks had passed by since the so-called Time of Troubles had ended, and 
Chaszmyr still gave praise for it. It had been a turbulent time for him. He 
patted his diamond scimitar, Lyonesse, fondly, in remembrance. 
His fine white brows furrowed slightly. He didn't like that he had lost the 
glowing gemstone, though Xune assured him it wasn't his fault. Who knew the 
crystal would fire that shaft of light into the sky, leading every brigand and 
horror to their doorstep? 
They had spent weeks battling thieves and creatures who mysteriously stumbled 
upon their secluded home in the woods. Ghosts moaned that the humming disturbed 
their rest. Several bands of orcs and goblins screeched and hissed that 'Drow no 
need pretty bright rock!' They even engaged a raiding band from the Cult of the 
Dragon, hoping to retrieve the treasure for their prized dracoliches. By the 
Abyss, even a dracolich had joined in the fray! 
In the end, a crude gang of drunken thieves had caught them just after the 
devastating battle with the dead dragon. Holding Xune prisoner, they had 
demanded safe passage and the crystal gem for her return. When he had granted 
them, the one holding her prisoner had stabbed her in the throat and ran, the 
whole group scattering. 
Luckily, Chaszmyr had used the last of the healing potions in their home upon 
his beloved, saving her life. Then, it had been a simple matter of tracking each 
and every one of the dogs down and showing them the true meaning of Pain. 
Every dog, except for the one with the crystal. 
Chaszmyr shook himself out of his reverie. Xune had been saved, and that is all 
that mattered, he kept telling himself, but the simmering anger continued to 
rankle in him. 
In the kitchen, Xune sang a melodic hymn to her returned goddess. 
Sighing to himself, he returned his attention to cleaning his other scimitar, 
Azariel. With a soft oil cloth, Chaszmyr smoothly ran it along the blade, a task 
that calmed him deeply. He felt the tension leave his body, like a receding 
tide. 
Yes, they had survived the Time of Troubles, a time when magic had gone awry all 
over the land, a time when the gods had walked the land. 
A time when Gods had died. 
"You're brooding again, Uncle Chaz," came a voice from his left, surprising him 
into leaping out of his chair and holding the elven blade to the throat of the 
intruder. 
Returning his glare with eyes twinkling in mirth was a pretty, young drow girl, 
to all appearances no older than 15, though her real age closed upon the late 
thirties. An impish grin, a magnificent velvet grey robe chased with gold runes 
around the hem, and a wondrous dragon-head staff - Chaszmyr dropped the scimitar 
back into its sheath and grabbed her in a fond embrace. "One of these days 
you're going to get it, Szaravel," he murmured into her ear. 
The young drow looked up at him. "And one of these days, I'm going to turn you 
into a goblin to teach you humility, Uncle Chaz." 
Before he could come up with a witty retort, Xune ran over from the kitchen and 
smothered Szaravel in a hug of her own. "Szaravel! When did you get here?" the 
warrior priestess cried joyfully, not wanting to relinquish her hold on her 
adopted daughter. 
Chaszmyr once again marveled at the age difference between the two. Xune, 
nearing her seventieth year of life, had all the vibrancy and appearance of a 
stunning twenty year old women. With the two of them together, the drow females 
looked more like sisters than anything else. 
"I just got here, Auntie Xune," Szaravel replied, finally escaping the older 
woman's grasp. "I thought I'd spend some time with you guys." 
Xune squealed in delight, but Chaszmyr grew concerned. "What happened to Zildra 
and your studies?" 
She shrugged. "Zildra's gone. I think she went away to die. She was getting 
quite old, you know." It chilled him to hear her say this with the same emotion 
one would give to sweeping the floor. "As to my studies, I'm old enough to learn 
on my own now. Besides, Zildra gave me her dwelling, and everything she has 
collected to date. I have enough to keep me occupied for centuries to come." 
Chaszmyr was about to ask more questions, but Xune elbowed him in his ribs, 
voicing her displeasure at the subject. "I TOLD you I don't want to hear about 
that witch!" she hissed, though she never moved her mouth. The small black pearl 
earring tingled slightly on his left ear, as the magic within it carried her 
telepathic message to his mind. 
With another magnanimous sigh, he let the matter go. It wouldn't do to anger his 
beloved, especially someone with the backing of a goddess. He may have be a 
fantastic warrior, but throw enough magic at him, and he'd be just another 
spirit wailing in the City of the Dead. 
Xune woke to the chiming of a mental bell, the same alarm that told her someone 
had just entered her grove. Slipping out of the canopied bed, she wrapped 
herself in a silken robe and tiptoed to the window. 
Darkness flowed about most of the woods surrounding her home, including the 
large clearing the stone mansion and the grove resided upon. Still, the water 
trilling from the fountain had a soft lunar sheen to it, vaguely illuminating 
the center of the well-tended grove. 
Xune narrowed her eyes. Even from this distance of several hundred feet, she 
could make out the heated forms of five individuals; females, she thought. She 
glanced up to the stars to judge the time. 'Hmm, just past Shar's zenith. That 
doesn't bode well.' 
She slipped out of her robe, donned a simple tunic and a pair of knee high 
leather boots, and prodded Chaszmyr awake. He opened his eyes, looking as if he 
hadn't been asleep at all. "Trouble?" he mouthed silently. She shrugged, but 
strapped her bastard sword, Orthae Abban, to her back. The counterweight of the 
sword glowed faintly silver. 
Chaszmyr threw on his own black tunic, a similarly hued cloak, and belted on his 
pair of scimitars. From its sheath, Lyonesse gave off a soothing moonlit glow of 
its own. 
With some surprise, the couple found Szaravel downstairs before the front door, 
patiently waiting for them, her staff in hand. "I felt the stirrings of magic," 
she replied to their raised eyebrows. 
Ever so quietly, she opened the oaken door, and the three sidled through, making 
no more than a whisper of sound on the springy grass. With the aid of their 
heat-sensing vision, the three dark elves had no problem approaching their 
quarry without being seen. 
The five figures seemed disoriented, confused. They were milling about, taking 
in their surroundings, though they couldn't see very much. Chaszmyr quickly 
realized they were humans, ones he had never seen in this vicinity before. Their 
outfits, he noticed with a carefully hidden grin, were a tad short for them to 
be wearing around, outfits very outlandish and foreign. Short skirts, skin-tight 
body suits, and cute bows of ribbon made up their clothing. 
With an intuitive shock, he realized that they looked familiar. 
Out of the corner of his eye, Chaszmyr saw Xune raise an arm, and several lit 
globes of moonlight drifted from her and illuminated the grove, bathing it with 
an ethereal light. The priestess then stood tall, ignored the scrambling of the 
human girls into defensive postures, and called out, "Who are you, and what are 
you doing in the Grove of Eilistraee?" 
Chaszmyr groaned inwardly, and he caught Szaravel's glare of irritation. 'So 
much for stealth,' he chided himself and stood out from the shadows himself. 
The five girls, for indeed, they couldn't have been more than 16 or 17, faced 
them defiantly. Very beautiful they are, mused the dark elf, taking in their 
stances and nodding in respect. It seemed they had been in fights before, 
judging from their combative postures. 
Suddenly, the one with hair darker than death collapsed, clutching at her head. 
"Something is wrong," Szaravel stated coolly to no one in particular as they 
watched the girls try to rouse their friend, though the one with... blue?... 
hair continued to fiddle with some small object in her hand. 
"I don't think they mean any harm," Xune whispered. "I don't sense evil from 
them." 
"Shall we aid them then?" Chaszmyr inquired, still eyeing the group 
expressionlessly. 
Before they could decide, the tallest girl, the one with dark auburn hair, 
twirled around, and Chaszmyr sighed exasperatingly at her words. 
"Now I remember! Dark elves! They're evil!" she cried, leaping to her feet. She 
crossed her arms, and lightning erupted from her tiara. 
Chaszmyr drew his weapons as a bolt of electricity screamed for his death.