Solid State 0: Terranigma
Gaseous vapors filled the cavern, some sparking with electricity, some clinging to stalagmites as if their lives depended on it. Something was off, here, Biggs knew. He had been a soldier most of his life (he and his brother joined around the same time, after attending the academy at Vector), and even after the injections he and his brother had received, he still felt funny around magic. Magic was thick in the air here in the cave, and even though both he and his brother knew the stakes of the mission, the stakes didn't make the feeling any less ominous.
The broken shell of the rakmi lay at his feet, shattered into a hundred fragments of colored glass. Normally a creature of the wild swamps, the miners had trained this one to guard the mines, but Biggs, Wedge, and the witch had dispatched it easily enough, aside from a few scrapes. The monster had the innate ability to absorb energy, and according to what he had heard about this mine, energy was something the mine had plenty of, perhaps too much for its own good. Sitting in her armor in between Biggs and Wedge, the witch was a pale thing, white hair, gentle eyes and a long face. Her eyes were white, very unsettling at first to look at, and she said very little even though her presence was always on Biggs's mind. The girl by herself was terrifying, but in her armor she was a force to be reckoned with, and Biggs wondered if the Emperor had sent the witch to guard them rather than the other way around, and ensure they returned to Vector successfully.
The girl who was with them was a monster, he was told. Burned fifty soldiers with just a glance. She was the prototype, she was the golden center of Vector's entire economy and the Emperor was risking her on this mission. Biggs didn't understand why; there were rumors, only rumors that a magical anomaly existed in Narshe, one of the northern cities outside of the Empire. His brother Wedge was more keen on accepting orders without question, and his brother was probably the reason they got this assignment, directly ordered from the Emperor himself. Why the Emperor's pet wasn't here, Kefka, he couldn't say, since he doted on the girl, but Wedge had gained enough trust from the court mage that the Emperor gave the Crown to him and told him to take one other person he trusted most.
"Wipe the blood off your armor, Big," he brother told him sternly. Wedge was all business, but this evening his voice carried worry, something Biggs knew was rare.
Biggs grunted in reply, but the blood was harder to wipe off because of the frost. They had received some resistance in town and were forced to leave a trail of bodies in the town square. The townspeople didn't stand a chance though, against their heavy Magitek armor. The armor had been given small doses of ether, and with the minimal training he and his brother had received, they could focus their minds and draw the living essence out of the air, drawing from their own bodies, plants, and even other living beings surrounding them. The armor allowed them to transfer the energy into various kinds of output, from flame, ice, even lightning. The girl's array of skills were more impressive, but she also could draw the same energy without the tech the armor provided (as her body actually provided it's own ether, as if ether flowed through her blood or something), whereas both Biggs and his brother needed to be physically plugged into the Magitek in order to access those weapons.
Terra (the girl's name, a name synonymous in the academy for inspiring for fear and adulation) was somber, the slave crown around her forehead shining with circuitry, but she was as silent as stone. Her eyes were a white fire, but with the crown controls Wedge had, she was totally docile. From what he was told, Biggs knew the crown was actually plugged into her brain, regulating the flow of ether in her body, slowing or speeding up the flow with the device Wedge had. As a result, the girl's mental state was devoid of emotion and will (and thankfully so, because in her natural state she apparently had no compunctions about taking life, even protectors of the Empire like he and his brother), but she could be triggered into that manic state by increasing the flow of ether through her blood, and rendered more compliant by slowing the flow. It was an ingenious device developed by the court mage Kefka, the same man who helped the Emperor's engineers develop the Magitek armor, Vector's source of glory and absolute sovereignty.
"Damn blood is sticky," Biggs muttered, taking a knife from his belt and trying to scrape it off his thick armor.
"Next time," Wedge said matter-of-factly, "use the right arm instead of the left arm when releasing Bios. The left arm sometimes crams up, because the Bios pockets are too close to the regulator."
Biggs sighed. His brother was right, as always. But Biggs still got nervous in battle, as back in town one of the guards had attacked him with a mammoth - a gods-damned mammoth, and the lumbering beast had near knocked his armor to the ground and Biggs had reacted instantly by severing the creature's head with a clean cauterizing blow from the left arm of his armor. He then immediately flooded the area around his feet with Bios, a deadly poison developed by the labs that caused flesh to disintegrate on touch, but Wedge was right - they had been taught in the academy to always use the right arm to release Bios, because the engineers were, well, engineers, and didn't foresee the need for both arms to use Bios as a defensive tactic, but saw it as a preliminary offensive attack, as Bios capsules if flung forward could actually create strategic barriers your enemy had to work around. The problem was, that using Bios at such close range when the enemy is climbing on top of the armor and trying to drag you out with their bare hands, is that Bios gets a bit messy, and sure enough when he used the left arm it released the Bios too early and splashed some of the chemical onto the arm's circuitry.
The mammoth trainer melted right onto the armor. Biggs wasn't worried - he was protected inside the cockpit, but the frost of this northern city solidified the man's remains onto the side of his armor, a dark red stain that was slowly starting to stink.
"Pretty face, think you could help?" Biggs called to Terra, whose blank face turned to face the soldier. The crown around her head sparked and the blue electric light that ran in and around her hair shone through the dank, rat-infested darkness. Her burning white eyes stared at Biggs, and he shuddered. "Just asking," he muttered, and finally was able to scrape off one of the biggest chunks from the armor.
"You should be more careful," the girl said, before turning her face back into shadow. She hadn't said much during the trip, so Biggs was a little surprised, but her voice held so little, he barely realized she had spoken.
"Yes, careful, Big," Wedge cut in, his armor's legs clanging forward, the sound echoing off the walls. "Report was a group of bandits in this cave, so keep your eyes peeled."
"Bandits?" Biggs asked. "This close to town?"
Wedge shrugged. "Narshe is rich in mithril, you should know that. Perhaps the bandits are even in league with the northerners, who knows. Unscrupulous, untrustworthy sort. All sorts of undesirables up this far north."
Biggs nodded. There were also rumors of several renegade political factions that operated out of Narshe. Bandits weren't so far off, especially in such a rich area like this. The mithril in the caves was one of the reasons Narshe had so far remained independent of the empire, able to buy their way out of having an imperial garrison close-by. That, and Figaro to the south, one of the empire's closest allies, in technology but over the last few years, politics have driven them further and further apart. He had a cousin that had been stationed at Figaro in the past, but after an incident, the imperial troops had been removed with the promise of increased trade between the two states. But Figaro was a buffer to Narshe, and also one of Narshe's biggest trading states, allowing Narshe a degree of neutrality but at the expense of the northern city becoming a hive of anti-imperialist scum.
As they moved further into the cave, the light from the mountainside faded and the blue electric vapors grew into a magnetic intensity in the growing shadows. Melted frost dripped from the ceiling of the cave, forming large puddles the armor clumsily splashed across. In distant corners of the cave, muffled voices could be heard, and huddled figures with torches approached the two soldiers and the witch. Almost immediately, Wedge rammed his right foot down on a lever and his armor, like a deadly tank, swung to the right. A brief fire from inside the right armor casing, and a pair of missiles burned through the darkness. One of the missiles hit its target with immense strength, sending the crouching figure into the rock and turning his body into a red design, while the other missile missed the target and exploded against the cave wall. An orange bloom exploded in front of Biggs, and but the ether in his armor threw up a temporary shield and the fire and burnt rock glanced off him, falling harmlessly to the ground.
The other figures that had accompanied their compatriot fled back into the cave yelling and tripping over themselves. Several of the vapors that had been floating ominously close to the soldiers also seemed to have disappeared, hugging the walls as if alive and sentiently aware of the doom that awaited them. They didn't have any other interruptions. They followed the witch Terra dutifully, trusting that she was leading them to the anomaly. Biggs checked his monitor every now and then, but soon fell to the monotonous sound of his armor clanking and echoing across the cave floor. Wedge was silent, and like Biggs, constantly was checking his monitor for an increase in ether.
Finally, the girl stopped, turning back to both Biggs and Wedge. "We are close," she said. She added quietly to herself, but loud enough for Biggs to hear, "I think I remember being here before..." Wedge didn't seem to notice, and moved forward past Terra. He switched on a light, and flipped down his goggles.
"It's here," he said, "the anomaly. But..."
"Yes?" Biggs interrupted, the cave suddenly lighting up as he flipped down his own goggles. "Oh..."
In a corner of the cave was an enormous creature encased in ice. Biggs couldn't tell what kind of creature, but it pulsed and buzzed with energy. His enhanced eyes allowed him to cut through the darkness at an expense of the ether in his armor, but the energy was so bright he had to cover his eyes. He couldn't quite discern what kind of anomaly it was, but before he could move forward to analyze it, the girl had dropped down from her armor and was walking toward the object hypnotically.
"Terra!" Wedge called out, his voice cutting through the silence. "Get back here! At once!" He flipped on the controls of the crown, and the witch stumbled, falling to her knees. Weakly and incredibly, she fought against the force of the crown, crying out and rising back to her feet. In retribution, the creature in the ice began to glow and Biggs was blinded temporarily. He heard a snap, instantly ripping off his goggles, and when he could see again his brother's head hung limply from his neck like a rag doll torn apart by an angry child.
"Wedge!" Biggs cried out in both terror and fury, stumbling out of his own armor towards his prone brother. The cords that connected him to his armor ripped out of his back, but he could hardly feel the pain. He dropped to the cave floor, but before he could reach his brother the creature unleashed a beam of light, ripping into Wedge. Wedge's armor sparked, hummed, and then exploded apart, and Wedge's body disappeared into a pillar of fire. Biggs fell forward, but only caught the ash of his brother as the armor fell apart like matchsticks around him.
The witch still cowered with the crown, but inched forward toward the creature, her eyes now a blinding white light that shone like lanterns in the darkness.
"Please, have mercy!" Biggs cried out. "Bring him back!"
The girl turned her head, looking towards Biggs with eyes at first vacant, and then anger flashed across her face and she looked more monster than human. She scowled and him, and Biggs grabbed the crown controls amid the rubble of the broken armor, instinctively turning the ether drain to the max.
The girl clutched her stomach in pain, and then began a piercing scream. The creature in the ice joined in her scream, and suddenly Biggs was knocked back into the cave wall with a force like a train. He heaved out, trying to get his breath. He couldn't believe it, under most tests the girl should have fainted from the strain. Draining her of ether was like draining a man of blood; but the girl wasn't even human now. She resembled one in shape, but her eyes were monstrous and filled with white fire, a siren of fury and bondage. Her face danced between the two forms, and her burning eyes showed the sorrow in her face, but a moment later she was the siren again.
"YOU SHOULD LEAVE," the witch said, her voice unearthly and tainted with the echoes of a myriad voices.
"Bring my brother back!" Biggs cried out, his rage rising to the surface, unable to keep his emotions in check. He knew inside that what he was doing was ludicrous, that he should just flee into the darkness and return to Vector with the crown and await execution honorably. But there was a strange power here, one that echoed in his own enhanced blood and cried out for vengeance. He leapt back into the armor, allowed the cords to reconnect themselves, and unleashed everything his abilities could handle. Fire and thunder both shot from both arms simultaneously, streaking towards the creature in the ice. The magic hit its mark, and the pain from the creature sounded immeasurable.
Terra cried out, her face of sorrow transforming into one of pure madness. Fire lit around her fingers, and her body ringed itself in white flame. Biggs felt himself burning from the inside first, as if the girl was taking the heat from his own body and turning it against him. But then he felt the outer heat, as the flames leapt from her fingers and covered Biggs, turning his armor into a furnace. He screamed, scrambled out of the armor, and using the last bit of power he had tried to heal himself. He managed to cauterize his burns, but he was dying, his body rejecting himself, his own blood crying out against him.
He lay on the ground, prone like that for a very long time. Eventually, the creature in the ice stopped howling, as the witch touched the creature and they seemed to commune. Biggs could not hear the words they spoke, as it only sounded like faint music. Eventually, even the girl's light faded, and the cavern was once again coated in darkness. Her heard the girl slump down onto the cold surface of the cavern, but he was too weak, and closed his eyes, feeling his life flee from him.
When he awoke, he was back in Vector. He had no idea how he arrived there, but he guessed the secondary company that had followed he and his brother found him and nursed him back to health. He lay for several days in the Vector ward, but could not bring himself to rejoice that he was still alive. The grinding gears and steam vehicles of Vector brought him little reassurance. He retired shortly after, taking a job repairing broken Magitek armors returned from the front, hoping each day to see his brother's shadow return through the gates of the great city.