Draco: What's up, Febass! It's Draco!

Arca: Don't forget me! The possibly (in)famous Arcality!

Draco: And we are asking for so much trouble right now. This little collab is based on Final Fantasy III, but we've decided to do things... a little differently.

Arca: Differently? You may be pondering. We can't tell you here in the authors' note! Read on to discover just what we've plotted-I mean, planned, for you! Happy reading!~

Final Fantasy III and the Eternal Wind era © Square Enix

"Where did that hole come from...?"

A girl with jet-black hair raised her gaze to the gap in the rocky surface above her. Her garments - jacket and leggings of well-worn, faded leather - were slightly damaged from the fall, and there was a small gash in her left palm where she had tried to grab the edges of the pit. Hooked on her belt was a small survival knife - which was probably cause for the cut at her hip.

With a shake of her head, she looked into the dark around her, ignoring the circumstances of her predicament. "Focus, Kyra," she told herself as she pushed herself off the ground with a grunt. She held her head high after a quick dust off, knowing fully well what she had to do next. "Gotta find that thief."

She glanced around carefully, straining to see in the darkness. This lower cavern had less access to the natural light that provided visibility in the upper section she had been running through; letting her silver eyes adjust, she slowly stepped further into the cave. The narrow tunnel she had fallen into opened up into a slightly wider section; with only one other entry from it, it appeared to simply be a functional corner of the cavern.

Indeed, Kyra was just about to turn that corner when a blur of movement caught the corner of her eye. Thoughts began to form in her head. She hoped it wasn't was she thought it was... but Kyra had a nervous feeling it was what she believed it to be.

She spun towards the blur, but too late - a sharpened edge thrust into her shoulder, and she gave a scream of pain as she stumbled back. Now she saw it clearly; a humanoid figure with green flesh, a trigram of horns upon its head. Its body was covered in beaten cloth, and in one hand was a knife. With all the might the creature could muster, it directed its high pitched cry at Kyra, most likely taking pride in its own stealthy attack. The creature screeched even higher at its foe, ready to battle, or more so, finish her off.

Goblins, such vile and troublesome creatures found in little hideaways such as this cavern, were often not difficult to deal with on their own. The odd goblin infestation in Ur caused a ruckus in daily life and a large group of villagers could easily scare a large group away from the village with their advanced weaponry. However, there was only one villager here, and there was only one goblin, and neither seemed to intimidate the other.

Kyra's hand flew for her own knife; as the creature rushed to her, focused on where to hit her. However, she forced her body to the side, causing the offending blade to strike the rock floor of the cave. She lashed her blade into her opponent's side, causing it to cry out - a twisted, garbled sound like shredding trees - and as she watched, it slowly faded out of existence.

The sudden burst of adrenaline faded, and Kyra fell to her knees, her knife falling from her hand as she gripped the cut in her shoulder. The girl's ill feelings of her surroundings were proven to be correct.

This was no place for a girl, nor a thief, to be.

"What was that...?" she gasped, horrified. "A... monster?" She looked up, glancing around. "What have I gotten myself into now...?"

Gritting her teeth against one another, she propelled herself to her feet, picking up her knife on her way up. "Come on, Kyra," she snapped at herself. It was the only way she could keep herself focused, the only way she would make her way out of this cavern alive. "Find the thief, and get back to Ur. Ignore the monsters." Kyra threw out orders to herself.

She turned around, ready to carry out her own orders, only to find herself face-to-face with another pair of goblins.

"Okay, maybe that's not going to work..."

It took Kyra a while to deal with what ended up being a set of six goblins. As many would think, six versus one never had its even chances. None of them took more than a single stab or slash to deal with, but they had landed a few blows in return; there was a nasty gash in her leg, and both arms now had nasty stab wounds. She stumbled further into the cave, every step sending a lot of pain through her body. No wonder children were kept further away into the village when goblins just happened to make their way into Ur. When they found a target, they really gave it all they had in them.

After a while, the tunnel widened out into a larger room. Someone had thought to hang a torch on the wall, which was burning brightly; how thoughtful of them to do so in a rather dangerous cavern. A pair of treasure chests were sitting at the far corners of the room, and Kyra managed to pull herself forward to them. One of them held a shield of hardened leather; though it didn't help the blows she already had, she was glad to take it and hook it onto her arm. The other held a corked glass bottle, filled with green fluid. She couldn't help but feel ill at the sight of it. It reminded her of the kind of liquids she had to take when she was sick, really sick. An idea was soon planted in her head, and it began to grow...

Should I? Kyra pondered. Or should I not? She looked carefully at the liquid inside; it looked like the potions for sale in Ur's shops, the kind she took if she was quite ill, but the torchlight made it hard to tell. A thoughtless shift of her weight sent pain shooting up her wounded leg, and she tumbled to the side, landing painfully on the cave floor. Kyra had a choice; she either had to risk it for the sake of her health, or grow progressively worse due to her wounds. "Screw it," she muttered, pulling the cork with her teeth and draining it in one go.

The pain in her leg was quickly forgotten - when she shot to her feet for the express purpose of throwing up into the chest.

"Spoilt," she forced out when the ordeal was done, slamming the chest to trap the smell. In a sense, things could have been a lot worse. The situation being a lot worse was her lying on the floor, possibly dead from whatever else that liquid could have been. Throwing up her full stomach content seemed a better route to stumble on than the staircase to heaven. Carefully, she got to her feet and started further into the cave - and was irritated to find herself at a dead-end.

"You've gotta be kidding me," she muttered, forcing herself further towards the dead end as she searched for anything - a crack in the wall, a suspicious draft, anything that said she wasn't trapped here. No such luck. Nothing at all. Today wasn't continuing on all that well, was it? With a sigh, she glanced at the bottle she still had in her hands with frustration and tossed it forward with a low growl, leaning against the wall after the deed was done.

It collided with a boulder - and the wall she was leaning on fell away, revealing a passage further in.

Glancing up at a wall that had suddenly disappeared, she raised an eyebrow at the craftiness of it... and the oddity of it also. "Okay then," she murmured, getting to her feet. "That worked." She couldn't help but sound rather pleased with herself, and made her way forward on the new path laid out for her.

She found another chest sitting nearby; stumbling towards it she found herself holding what appeared to be a simple double-edged longsword, complete with a sheath for mounting on one's back. Maybe her luck was turning after all!

"Yes...!" Kyra laughed in victory, and couldn't help but kissing the hilt of the sword, celebrating her victory rather loudly.

Turning around after her victory, only then did she see another trio of goblins taking notice of her. With their own screeches, excited for battle, they lunged themselves at her.

"No, no, no!"

Kyra stumbled up the earthen slope, her body and garments now littered with cuts, with a nasty gash on her forehead from where one of the goblins had forced her into a particularly uneven wall. She lumbered her sore body on as the cavern levelled out, and she found herself at a three-way fork in the cave; she glanced around her for a brief moment before trudging straight forward, desperate to get out of here before the cavern's creatures got to her. More fighting was the last thing she needed right now. The straight path took her to another fork; the shining glow from the right path convinced her that that was her way out, and she forced her body to move, praying she wouldn't run into any more goblins.

She didn't.

What she found instead were a trio of rocks, each with a single monochrome eye glaring at her. Above them were two glowing blue orbs, each surrounded by a powdery white smoke.

The moral of this for Kyra was to be careful what she wished for from now on.

An expression most pitiful rose on Kyra's face as she reached for her sword, drawing it and holding her shield before her. A few battles had helped her learn how to defend properly. Hopefully, that learning would now show through her next battle practise. The blue wisps shot towards her, but she quickly lashed her sword through one, ducked under the other, and rushed at the eyed stones. Thinking quickly, she drove her blade into each of their eyes, causing the rocks to tremble violently on her blade as they faded; then she turned around, expecting the wisp she hadn't struck.

She didn't expect that the one she had hit would still be there.

"Come on..." she groaned, gripping her sword tightly as she prepared to hold her own.

The two wisps rushed to her attack her yet again. She lashed at one, which appeared to be her initial target, causing it to fade before it could strike her. She swung at the other, but couldn't get a second hit in before it slammed into her stomach, knocking her back and causing her to hit the stone again. The wisp hovered over her menacingly, and with what energy she had, she stabbed at it with her blade, causing it to fade away.

She didn't have the strength to get back to her feet; slowly, she rolled onto her stomach, grabbing the stones around her and pulling herself forward. The pain shot through Kyra's back after the collision with the stone. The rocky ground grazed through her clothes and into her stomach, but she continued to move forward, going towards the light that should have signalled the exit to the cave.

What she found instead was water - water lit by a light all its own, as though the sun had been mixed into it.

Kyra pulled herself to the water's edge, looking at her twisted reflection in the water. "A spring?" she murmured. "That colour..." The pain in her body made it hard for her to think, but she felt like she had seen something like this before. It was hard to picture anything at the moment. Every time she looked for something that would help heal her wounds, her memories seemed to lead her back to home, to Ur. As much as Kyra's mind was clouded, she tried her hardest to think, even closing her eyes at one point to get an image or a memory to come back to her...

A drop of blood dripped from her forehead, striking her chest.

Then she decided it didn't matter, sinking her hand into the water and cupping it to bring the liquid to her lips. The moment her fingers were empty, she sank them into the water again, taking another drink; and then another; and then another. Her hands went from the water to her mouth quicker and quicker each time she went for it.

A few minutes passed before she had finished, and raised her head from the water and took a deep breath. The pain that had filled her body since she had fallen into this cave was nonexistent; the cuts and gashes had closed without a trace. Revitalized, Kyra got to her feet, glancing down at the spring.

"A wellspring," she remembered, her mind clear without pain to cloud it. There were springs like this at Ur; how had she forgotten about those? Maybe the pain was that bad. After all, it's all you think of when you get it. The trouble was, Kyra still couldn't understand why she had forgotten about the springs, nor why she couldn't remember the pain she suffered only a moment before.

Glancing around, she caught sight of a small chest nearby reaching in, she found a peculiar blue sphere emblazoned with an icy sigil.

A curious hum passed through her lips; nonetheless, she slipped the orb into her pocket before returning down the cave she had found, picking up her longsword on the way.

Having gone back to revisit the other paths from the ascent, Kyra had been pleased to find two more of the blue orbs; taking the path opposite the wellspring led her to a set of stairs. This eventually took her outdoors - which meant she wouldn't be pounced on from the shadows. Kyra was relieved to be outside once again, albeit in the twilight; the sun had begun to set while she was inside.

She was surprised to see a man in a long, black jacket reclining against the nearby stones. In his hand was a familiar accessory; a necklace of white gold, adorned with four jewels - emerald, ruby, sapphire, topaz - and clasped with gold. He seemed to chuckle away with himself, taking pride in the item he had acquired. Upon recognizing the man and the prize he held so dearly in his hand, Kyra drew her sword, yelling out, "There you are!"

The man in the jacket turned towards the call - and a look of shock appeared on his face when he saw Kyra. "You!" he shouted. "I thought I'd lost you!"

"Well ya didn't," Kyra corrected, her hands gripping on the sword as fury began to bubble away inside of her. "Now, give back my necklace, and I won't have to report you to-."

"Like hell," the man spat, his tone of voice rough, and cold. "After the trouble I went through to take it? I'm not just givin' this back!"

"I don't want to hurt you," Kyra insisted, despite her grip on the hilt getting tighter and tighter as irritation, too, started to rise to the surface.

The man spun the necklace around his finger, grinning just slightly. "Well, then isn't this just my lucky day?"

He turned and took off running, towards a large structure... was that a temple? Kyra started running after him, keeping her blade to one side - the longsword had a lot more potential for her to cut herself than her knife did. Unfortunately, she was not exactly accustomed to running without full movement of her arms, and the thief quickly disappeared into the temple ahead of her.

When she caught up, she was surprised by what was waiting for her.

Sitting within the temple, at an altar of shining stones, was a single massive crystal - a particularly blue hue of spring green. The altar was not very well lit, even considering the time of day; the thief with her necklace was standing in front of the crystal, as though realizing he had made a wrong turn. The design of the temple meant he had nowhere to run, and with a grimace, he turned to face Kyra.

"Listen," Kyra began, slowly stepping a foot out towards him. "I don't-"

"No, you listen!" the thief snapped back, backing away, scowling at her. "I don't know who the hell your parents are, but they oughta teach you right. I take something, it's mine. I'm not just gonna hand it back over." He sneered, and watched with amusement as Kyra's expression became a nasty glare.

The robber grinned. "Oh, I'm sorry, is that a sore spot for you? Sorry, lassie, but I'm not-"

A series of canine howls cut him off - both the snatcher and Kyra looked around for the source of the sound. Kyra saw it first - a trio of hounds charging forward from behind the crystal.

No... a trio of heads on the same hound.

Without thinking, Kyra screamed, "Look out!"

The man spun around as the beast rounded the crystal. Its fur was a nasty dark blue, and its faces were not normal canine faces - a twisted combination of wolves and the goblins from the cave. Its eyes were blood red as they fully focused on the man below. As the heads either side flung around, their nightmarish eyes darting from corner to corner of the room, the center head took an interest to the thief below. As sharp, clean fangs were bared, a horrified scream sounded from the robber as the center head lunged forward, its fangs digging into his stomach. Kyra's necklace was sent flying from the man's hand as the head reared back, throwing him into the air half-severed, and the other two heads began to lash at him when they were finished looking around their surroundings, trying to get some of the thief for themselves in their stomach.

Kyra grabbed the necklace and hastily backed away, horrified by the sight of the man being torn apart by something of mere legend, from a scary story from younger years! What is that thing!? Is that the cause of the monsters from the cave? Kyra asked herself in horror, looking on at the violence still taking place among the heads as the limbs were ripped apart and off the man. She shook her head. I've got to get out of here…

Help... me...

The voice came from nowhere - it didn't even touch her ears as much as it touched her mind. "What...?" She glanced around. "What was...?"

Please... save me...

Defeat... Cerberus...

Kyra had no time to react; the tri-headed hound had devoured the robber, and now had its gaze locked on her. Its fangs were bared once again, no longer showing clean, crystal-white fangs, but dark red stained fangs, blood drooling down the sides of each of the heads' mouths. "This thing?" she shouted at the temple around her, her tone full of disbelief. "Are you crazy?"

The monster - Cerberus - howled viciously, bringing her attention back to it, to what was the monster's desire for more bloodlust.

A heavy gulp came from Kyra as she raised her sword and shield.

"Alright. If I can... I'll save you!"

The monster leapt forward as one, and Kyra quickly leapt to the side, causing it to skid against the temple floor. Moving quickly, she lashed at its hind legs, causing the beast to howl and whirl around; the monster's fangs skidded across her blade, shearing off one of the blade's edges. Kyra glanced at the blade before raising her gaze to the beast, which howled again; thinking quickly, she hurled her shield at it, causing the three heads to start biting at it, before lashing her sword across its forelegs.

This time the beast acted faster; one of the heads lashed down and bit at her longsword, shattering the steel.

Kyra glanced at her bladeless hilt before raising her gaze to the beast's three heads. Horrified, she released her weapon and stepped back, reaching into her pockets; and one hand found the three orbs she had picked up from the cave.

It's not like I have any other choice.

"You want to eat?" she taunted at Cerberus, drawing out the icy blue spheres - it was only just possible for her to hold them all in one hand. "Eat these!"

She hurled the three orbs at Cerberus, and the three heads quickly lunged forward, their maws each closing on one orb.

And the orbs each erupted in a spray of icy energy, causing Kyra to scream and take cover. All that was heard throughout was loud, high howls and whimpers of pain. When the chill mist faded, the beast was dead on the floor of the temple, slowly fading away.

Kyra panted, horrified. Slowly, she glanced around. "Where are you?" she called. "Who are you? And what... what was that?"

The sun was setting outside - and yet, without warning, the temple began to brighten.

You have been chosen...

Kyra yelped, spinning around; but her movements came to a stop. The massive crystal was shining from within, illuminating the altar - and it was slowly turning. "Is this... Is the crystal... talking to me?" It was a sight to behold. She heard about the crystals, how they kept the balance of their world. But... one that moved and presented itself like that? And... talked?

Brave warrior... you have been chosen as the bringer of hope...

There are others who share your destiny... You must seek them out...

"What... what do you mean?" Kyra cried out. "What are you talking about?!"

Once you find them... I will bestow upon you... our last light... our last hope...

Now, go!

"Wait! I-I don't understand!" Kyra shouted - but to no avail. A bright light, like that coming from within the crystal, began to envelop her, and her feet lifted from the ground as the world was blot out from her vision.

Arca: Well then, that was very interesting indeed, if I do say so myself!

Draco: Hear hear! Forgive me if I sound pretentious, but I feel like that came out quite nicely - albeit in a very... what's the word I'm looking for? necrous manner.

Arca: We really are asking for some amount of trouble here...ah, but a life without trouble is no life at all!

Draco: Alright then! Let us know what you think! Write what you think is right.

Arca: ...hey, wait just a moment! Isn't that my old play on words quote?!