"Impossible-!"

The great Bloody Angel screamed with all of the anger of Hell itself, and as it began to shiver and crumble, leered with its last ounce of strength at the one who had perpetuated this crime, noble as it was. The young man stared back, somewhat amazed himself that he had served the deathblow to a being that he had not been sure that could be killed by any mortal being.

"Thank God, Ramza, you did it…" whispered the knight that stood at his flank. The elderman lowered his sword, albeit slightly, but to see Orlandu with his guard wavering showed an unusual amazement in the unflappable famous warrior.

Altima, the true force behind Ajora the false savior, continued to writhe about, shooting off beams of energy that its failing form could no longer contain. They shot at random angles, and were beginning to shave off pieces of the airship hull that this ultimate battle had taken place on. Panic began to erupt among some of the company as they realized the hazard that was beginning to surround them. Mustadio stood beside Alma, who was at the polar opposite side from where Ramza had struck down the Demon, and tried to make sure that the increasingly abundant wood shrapnel was not going to harm the most vulnerable person in the party.

"Alma's safe with Mustadio," Meliadoul, who had been on Ramza's other flank, assured him when she noticed that he had begun to shoot his gaze around worriedly for his sister and only remaining family member.

No one's safe now you fool…

Ramza heard a voice in his head, vile and hate-filled. His thoughts turned away from his comrades and back to what was left of Altima. The flesh of the being seemed to decay in front of him, but the now-blacked out eyes of the evil being seemed to look into his.

You thought you won, and indeed, you have succeeded in banishing me to the blackness…

Ramza looked to his side. Orlandu and Meliadoul had taken to rounding up their panicked comrades and seemed to be throwing gazes about for an exit. No way out.

By entering my kingdom and destroying me you have doomed your 'faithful friends' into an untimely death. How unfortunate.

Mustadio approached him hurriedly, and Alma ran from the Engineer's side to embrace her brother, tears in her eyes. The voice kept speaking.

Watch it all, you insolent worm…

Ramza knew now that it was only speaking to him; Alma continued to cling to him for a moment longer, and then began to look around frantically, as the ground beneath them began to shake. The wooden planks splintered beneath their feet, and people leapt about, trying to keep their footing on what stable flooring they could find. Below them, spread a great nothingness, and in the distance, what had once been the tainted city was dissolving into black.

"I came prepared to die…" Ramza heard his old friend, Eric, the Ninja whisper to himself and watched him draw closer Emerald, the Summoner, who was his new wife. Ramza could make out that her lips whispered 'I love you' back to Eric as she clung to his side and prepared herself to face the same fate.

I have a special treat for you. I'll leave you with the assurance that there is no holy light in this vastness beyond your world, that there are only more like me who will come another day.

Ramza leered up at the black lump that was left of Altima, but it still bore the dead eyes of the being. They looked at him, and he could feel them laughing with delight.

"Ramza!!"

The flooring beneath Alma had given way at that moment, and she began to fall into the abyss. He reached out to catch her hand, and narrowly missed, screaming her name in horror. Mustadio, who had been holding on to a plank nearby held out the butt of his pistol, which Alma managed to grasp and hung by beneath them both. Alma looked up at the both of them, her eyes filled with tears.

"Alma, hold on!" Mustadio called to her desperately, and under his breath asked "Can't anyone do something?"

Ramza looked around again. Everyone was still accounted for; some were hanging on to small bits of floor, while others still stood against the brisk wind that had whipped up stronger and stronger as Altima decayed more and more. He had always led them through somehow, though bravery, through guts, through sometimes luck.

"I have no more to give… what can I do now? I've brought them to this and now what sort of leader am I? All my friends… Are to go down with me."

With you? Oh, and that's my other little gift to you before I depart. My last act is to send you back home, safe and sound, to remember how you killed all of your friends!

"What? NO!" Ramza finally shouted out to the now only one evil eye.

I wish you a long life of despair, you damned mortal fool.

In an instant, the black eye shattered for all to witness and formed a cloud that churned the wind round and round. The last pieces of the hull, and all of Ramza's friends began to spin in the wind, all now clinging to a board, a hand, even a gun, desperate to hang on to that last shred of hope for safety. Ramza found himself in the eye of the cyclone, being surrounded by the last power of Altima.

I wish you a long, excruciating life!


Time stopped for Ramza, somehow. About to be 'saved' by Altima's treacherous last deed, he felt something familiar inside himself come together, felt a sudden surge of irrational hope as a memory of his father flashed into his mind:

It had been during his early youth, no more than ten years old, that noble Balbanes had taken him into a special sort of training. He had no name for these techniques, and never tried to give them any title, but Ramza had, in his childish way, referred to them as 'using your guts', mainly because these techniques relied upon faith, prayer, determination, and hope. Balbanes only explanation of the technique was that it had been handed down to him by his mentor and trainer, Torgath Ruglia, whose daughter Balbanes would marry after his first wife died in childbirth, and who was thus also grandfather to Ramza and Alma. Ramza had assumed that this was a part of Balbanes' routine training regimen, until he discovered from Balbanes towards the end of the long illness that would eventually claim the nobleman's life that the training was, in fact, special to Ramza alone.

He remembered being called into his father's study in one of the last days before his dear father's strength finally failed and left him bedridden. He found Balbanes in the great chair before the hearth, a thick robe wrapped around his quickly-declining form, the red flickers of the fire giving color to his otherwise pallid and drawn face.

"Lord father, you called for me?"

"Yes, yes, dear Ramza, do sit down," Balbanes said, his voice still commanding, but growing brittle around the edges. Ramza sat in the smaller chair beside his father and looked at him with nervous intensity – it wasn't often that he was summoned to his father's most private sanctuary. It either meant that he had angered his father and was to hear his punishment, or, on a rarer occasion, that there was something of the utmost importance to discuss. Either option seeming painful for him, considering his father's declining health, Ramza sat in readied silence for Balbanes to begin.

"I do realize that it has been for some weeks now that I have neglected our training together," Balbanes began slowly and deliberately. "However, as I look at you now, and I know the noble and true heart that beats within you, I can rest easier… I wish to tell you that your training with me is complete, and now I must pass onto you what your grandfather Torgath told me before he left this life of pain behind…"

"Fain! Father, you shall not be joining grandfather any time soon!" Ramza interjected, his voice nearly cracking at the thought of losing his father and mentor.

Balbanes smiled tiredly, "Child, am I to pass this life tomorrow or in one hundred years, whose place is that to know? I have chosen to finish your training today, so that whatever befalls me tomorrow I may at least have finished this one thing in my life. Now, if I may have no more interruptions, however well-meaning," he gave Ramza a patient but adamant look that he had given all of his sons many times over his years as a father. Ramza sat up straighter in his chair, and nodded, ready to listen.

"Ramza, dear son, what I have taught you over the years is indeed unique to the Ruglia family. Although they are considered 'lowborn', there is a tradition and noble spirit amongst their clan that I would consider more noble than any of the titled gentry; a clan of incorruptible knights and heroes of the lowly. Unfortunately, most of your kin, as you know, have fallen during the last two wars this century, leaving only the line of your grandfather, Torgath, via his only daughter…" he paused in the way he often would when he remembered Maria, Ramza's mother, who had died shortly after Alma was born.

"In many ways, Torgath saw me as the son he never had, and taught me nigh all of his traditional combat forms, all but their secret. However, the day that I asked for your mother's hand in marriage, he rejoiced to be able to pass on the last of his training, as he was advanced in years and knew it unlikely that he would live to pass these things to you himself, which, as you know is how it did come to pass.

"So here we are now, my child, and it is time for you to know of the endgame of the Ruglia's unique abilities. You shall, as you mature and continue to adhere to the disciplines of your training, find that your stature as a knight will grow and strengthen, and that many more skills of naught but your heart and faith shall become known to you, but fain should it come that ever you reach the pinnacle of this power. Master Torgath explained to me that I am incapable of the ultimate technique of his training because the blood of the Ruglia clan does not run through my veins. But it does you.

"I know naught of what this power truly is, he only described it as 'a potent of the miraculous that only a pure heart of despair and fiercest love can attain.' But his highest hope was that his beloved grandson would never find himself in such a place where there was naught left but the faintest glimmer of a righteous hope, for he warned that you would come to understand the price of such a miracle. This was all that he could tell; he himself, of course, had never come to this power, but was adamant that the awareness of this burden, be it legend, be it true, must be passed down the family line, as he put, 'so the hero may be truly heroic.'"

Here Balbanes stopped and looked over to his son to search the boy's face in response to this revelation. Ramza looked thoughtful, but grave, his eyes staring off into the fire before them.

"Ramza, son," Balbanes began again, Ramza's attention snapped back to his father where he could now see the emotion that the old man was spilling over with, eyes shining with barely-contained tears, "It pains me to burden you with this knowledge, but I pray, as your grandfather before you, that fate will never place you in such a place where only a miracle can be hoped for… May it be that your training in these mysterious things shall only serve to make a great and noble man of you. That, I have no doubt of, and have no doubt that you shall do my name proud, as well as that of your mother."

"Father…" Ramza murmured, his own eyes awash of tears now, and then threw himself to his father's side, embracing him as the child he was quickly growing out of. "Father, I shall be a credit to all you are and have taught to me. Never shall I shame your name! Never."

"Ramza…" Balbanes placed a hand upon his son's head, seeing much of himself in the boy, and found a sense of peace that he had impacted this young, noble life.

The memory flashed by in but a second, but it was long enough that he understood – without reason, without thought -- he knew what he had to do. It was instinct to him; it was a part of him to his very fiber, as was his knowledge of the price of such an action. But that did not hold him back for even one second: these friends of his, loyal, true, wonderful people without whom none of this triumph would have been possible were the only matter in his mind now.

His heart ached for them. The swelling of the secret power within him grew.

So much love among them: Eric and Emerald, just married not two months ago even amidst strife and combat. Alberto and Alyssa, brother and sister, friends of his since their first days at the Gariland academy, their family lost in the Fifty Year's War, finally found a new family amongst their brothers in arms. Agrias, the loneliness of her existence before was but a distant memory now. Mustadio, buoyant and clever, and as great a friend as Ramza had since he and Delita were small. Beowulf and Reis, a love that conquered separation of distance and a dire enchantment, and now they had found a safe place to remain among new friends. Meliadoul, still mourning the brother she felt that she failed and just beginning to trust her new friends after the abuse and betrayal of her devious and violent father. And even Count Orlandu, given up his position of nobility and power to fight for the truth, like the godfather of this troupe.

They were soon to perish in this netherworld. Such despair within his heart, despair and love.

And finally, Alma. The only blood kin left to him, the one person that he had promised to his dying father that he would take care of. The one person that he had strived so hard to save, to return to life to live with a future and hope. Dear sister, his friend and ally since the day she had been born, so strong and intelligent. And she was all but lost now.

The pain and wretchedness burned within his chest, merging with the familiar power of his special training. He hoped. It was all he had left. This one desperate, irrational hope was all that stood between letting his friends die here alone and the one possibility of sending them to safety, and to do so before Altima could send him away to live on, alone with their deaths on his hands for eternity.

A single tear escaped his eye as his despair, his hope, his love, and the latent power merged inside his chest.

For a split second, there was nothing. No feeling, like he had suddenly become empty of everything, no sound, no motion. And it only made the excruciating burning that ripped from his core all the more intolerable when it exploded forth from him in an intense golden light.

The light absorbed the accursed magic Altima had set upon Ramza, merged with its intention and then burst from his hands like fireballs in all directions, spinning with the already chaotic vortex that threatened to consume them. Ramza could barely see the astonished looks on everyone's faces over the light and intense, draining pain that overtook his form, then as each burst of energy found a person, it flashed and their form was instantly gone in the unmistakable shimmer of a transportation spell.

He laughed above the anguish in his body as he knew that the miracle had occurred as each of his friends, his family, winked out of the swirling abyss back to the world of men; laughed that the miracle had taken the final cruelty of Altima and twisted it into something good.

He laughed still with all of the joy in his heart when he saw Alma's face, the last to remain, brighten with the flash of energy and vanish with her mouth in the middle of calling his name out to him.

He laughed as he heard the dying cry of anger as the thwarted Altima faded into the nothingness.

And in that blackest of places, as Ramza could feel the last of the miraculous energy leave behind a throbbing, aching hollowness within his body, even as he no longer had the energy to laugh, joy still overcame him – the joy of the salvation of his friends in the face of certain doom.

He did not fret or fight at the fading of his consciousness, as he knew and welcomed the price he must pay for daring to use the rare power that he possessed.

"I only wish that I could have seen them safe with my own eyes…" was his last passing thought as his mind faded into an easy darkness and his body's pain washed away.

A last white spark flickered in the nothingness, and the form of Ramza Beoulve disappeared as well in a wash of light. The abyss was left to its own emptiness.