This story got written because, as I recall, Gryphon had mentioned wishing we knew what was up with Anthy, and that she was being very patient in the Green Room, but that he just wasn't coming up with anything particularly interesting for her to do. At which point I was informed that I did have something for her to do, and that I was going to spend all of Thanksgiving weekend doing it. (There were about 72 hours in there where I didn't do much except write, sleep, and eat dinner.) ALC

61 This flashback and Anthy's reflections on it are drawn from the source material. Part of the backstory of Revolutionary Girl Utena, which was alluded to in Utena's conversation with the spectre of Prince Dios in Hogtown Rhapsody, was that Dios, overwhelmed by the demand for princely rescue in the modern world, overworked himself and fell ill, despite his sister Anthy's efforts to care for him. Desperate to save his life, she eventually went so far as to magically sequester him from the world that needed his help, in hopes that this would enable him to rest and recover. Instead, he perished. His body lived on, but without his selfless and caring spirit within it, it became Akio, a heartless, power-seeking manipulator. Anthy suffers as she does in the series primarily as a sort of karmic payback for her ill-considered act of cosmic sabotage.

92 This part of UF-Cephiro's backstory comes straight from Magic Knight Rayearth. It was while this piece was in progress that we really began to realize how well the mystic machinery underpinning the Rayearth and Utena stories could be made to dovetail, resulting in the Tenth World as we know it today.

146 The primal sorcerous elements of Cephiro are something of an amalgamation of the alchemical elements of Western mysticism and the traditional elements of the East. Both systems have air, fire, and water in common. Iron takes the place of earth in the Western and metal in the Eastern traditions, and the Forest stands in for the Eastern wood.

198 Anthy went to the Rune Gods in the classical MKR order - Sea, Wind, Fire (with a brief detour for Iron). You'll note that when Corwin came and messed with things in Knights of the Tenth World, that order got screwed up. ALC

249 Anthy's dusky skin causes most Cephireans to take her for a Shalharan, but she's actually Nihonian by birth. As we will learn in Endgame, her skin tone comes from the fact that her mother was one of the black elves of Svartalfheim.

296 The secretive brothers of Azarath are Cephiro's strongest mystic monks, but not the only monastic order to know something of magic.

335 Well, they're monks. They don't get many women stopping by for breakfast - especially not ones to whom the mists of destiny cling in a manner palpable to their meditation-honed senses.

434 This is ancient Alvish, the common ancestral language of all the elves of the Celestial Realms. From this we can conclude that Anthy's mother was an educated woman, as only dedicated scholars know Alvish among the svartelves. Their modern language has evolved - some would say decayed - a great deal in the eons since their ancestors left Alfheim for the underground realm of Svartalfheim.

455 Many mythic and fictional interpretations of dragons involve an aura of power so intense that ordinary mortals flee in terror even from good dragons. Celes, it seems, is no exception.

480 This story also reflects my love of trains as the civilized means of travel, a pleasure that would continue to be reflected in Knights of the Tenth World. ALC

495 Like all inhabitants of the Heavens - for all its darkness and evil reputation Svartalfheim is, in fact, the lowest of the Heavens, not the highest of the Hells - svartelves have facial markings that denote their place in the celestial hierarchy.

577 Ascot, master of beasts, is one of several antagonists the Rune Knights must overcome in Magic Knight Rayearth. Here we meet him under somewhat different circumstances.

490 Emeraude's failure as Pillar is integral to the link between the MKR and RGU source materials in UF-Cephiro.

615 In addition to having a BattleMech named after them, griffins (half lion, half eagle, and about the size of a horse) are well-regarded mythic beasts. They have a reputation as fierce protectors and an identification with scholarship (which is why they're often found outside libraries).

650 Also known as the "sphinx position".

655 Windam's portfolio is the most ambiguous, or perhaps simply the broadest-reaching, of the three key Rune Gods. He corresponds to the classical element Air, but is also sometimes identified with the skies in general, wind (as his name suggests), and even storms. Indeed, the Rune Knight associated with him is most commonly referred to as the Knight of the Storm. As we will see, all Rune Knights have an element of duality in their makeup, but in Windam and his Knight, the dichotomy is most pronounced.

679 Some interpretations of Cephirean myth insist that Windam is an eagle, not a phoenix, as he does not perish in fire (that's a different Rune God's element) and rise again from the ashes.

771 I was so impressed by Phil's shadow play for Ohtori Academy Spring Semester Blues, I felt the need to continue it in all of the Cephirean Interludes that I wrote. ALC

823 The Master Smith's forge is located in the Forest of Silence, where no mortal magic works but hers, for the same reason that microprocessors are made in clean rooms: to prevent contamination by uncontrolled outside forces. The Master Smith's techniques are delicate and subtle, and require absolute mystic clarity to work correctly.

866 The Rune God of Iron, also known to Cephirean scholars as the Lost Rune God and The Nameless One, is not present in the original Rayearth story. We added him to the UF version for reasons which will become obvious.

917 Ironically, thanks to her svartelven blood, giant spiders would probably leave Anthy alone, or even help her.

927 Speaking of svartelven blood, it seems she did not inherit her mother's racial ability to see in the dark... or maybe it's just that dark in there.

943 As we will see later, this is Corwin. Note the plural, though. Interesting...

961 The Nameless One, held so much more aloof from mankind even than his brother Rune Gods, is not necessarily cruel, but has little patience for the fragility of mortals.

1009 True Iron: also known as escudo in Cephiro and uru in Asgard, True Iron is the elemental archetype of all metals. Mortal chemists would take it for plain, ordinary iron (albeit of a startling purity), but it is practically indestructible and has certain mystic properties. Thor's hammer Mjolnir, Odin's spear Gungnir, Skuld's mallet Bjarnnil, and the ferrules on Corwin's warstaff, Stick, are all made from uru. In the Heavens, only smiths personally invested by the gods may work with this material. (The Thorn of the Rose isn't uru for that reason; instead, it's made from the toughest of "immortal" (i.e., non-elemental, but still celestial) metals, adamantine. Which is not to be confused with Adamantium, a trademarked Midgardian steel alloy.)

1087 The Cephirean tradition of magic gems is an ancient one. Crystals, with their regular structure, help to focus the mind. Indeed, most Cephiran sorcerers have one particular gem in which they've invested so much concentration and training that they've become dependent on it, and find it difficult, if not impossible, to work magic without it. In one of Cephiro's many peculiar mystic parallels with Midgard, this gem is commonly referred to as its owner's "Mage Lens" (because it focuses his power). The fact that Anthy doesn't need one is a reflection of her alien heritage: svartelven sorcerers eschew such crutches, as it makes them too vulnerable to their rivals.

1095 Not so much the roses as the awakenings within Anthy that the process of gathering the roses is causing. We see her slowly becoming what she has always been meant to be - and since that something is, in part, a svartelven sorceress, it's only natural for the common people to be a bit frightened.

1145 Common people in Cephiro fear sorcerers because of the growing conflict between the two halves of the Tenth World - the part that's a reflection of Midgard, which in the 25th century largely disregards magic, and the part that reflects Asgard, where magic remains a vital, even dominant force in everyday life. This imbalance, coupled with Emeraude's inability to cope with her own problems enough to address is, threatens the world.

1284 As the living embodiment of fire, Rayearth finds any manifestation of confinement or enslavement offensive. Fire wants, demands, to be free, and has little patience with anything that meekly accepts captivity.

Not to mention he absolutely loathes Akio and all he stands for - walking death that should have been purged in clean fire. Sadly, while Akio never again manages to get his hooks into Anthy's heart and soul, he can control her body, and there are certain schemes that only require that. Rayearth's power is limited until his Rune Knight comes to free him from his bondage, though he would undoubtedly like to save Anthy the trouble she's going to have to face before she's reunited with Utena... ALC

1302 The Knighthood of the Rose is not an ancient office, as are the others; it was created specifically by Prince Dios for Utena when they first met, in the hope that the potential he saw in her would eventually enable Utena to free his sister from the doom he feared would soon be upon her. Such an act had never been attempted by any Prince before him, and would have consequences even he could never have imagined.

1373 Nanami knows that what she is about to do will almost certainly cost her her life; whether she has any idea how much more it will cost her is uncertain, but probable. Her only real certainty at this point is that there's no way out: either she sacrifices herself to prevent Akio from achieving absolute power, or she does nothing, he achieves it anyway, and then he hunts her down. Either way is bad for Zathras.

1449 What Zagato takes for attempts by Utena to re-enter Cephiro were actually her inadvertent removals of Saionji, Miki, and Juri.

1480 Zagato has much weighing on his mind right now, and this development doesn't help.

I'm also very fond of non-traditional (read: non-Tolkein) fantasy, which this definitely is (that is to say, not-Tolkein).

>1373 Nanami knows ... Either way is bad for Zathras.

This is one of the reasons that I can't help but wonder if Surtur CHEATED a little to get his paws on her soul, and if maybe she wasn't just about to head a different direction upon arriving at her expiration date. .. But her story isn't quite over yet, so maybe I'll be surprised.. or maybe I won't..

('Time will tell,' said the monkey who hid an egg in the Grandfather clock.)

Call me a fanboy, but the order of "Water, Wind, Fire" is also in Chrono Trigger. You unlock two things in that way at a "Magic Kingdom" location. (Iron is classified as Physical damage.)