My second game adaption, this time of Sonic '06! This is personally my favorite storyline in the entire Sonic series, I love this game with all my heart and I am hoping very much that my adaption will do it justice and breathe new life into a game that is often hated. As with my first adaption, updates will come every Monday and Friday until the fic is finished. I hope you enjoy reading this, because I certainly enjoyed writing it!
Ruins of the old city, two hundred years after the apocalypse
Heat was all Silver had known for weeks - blistering, choking heat, filling the air from every direction, but coming especially from below, from the lava pits no one dared go near if they valued their lives.
Silver hovered high above such a pit, a vivid cyan glow surrounding his white form, amber eyes surveying the landscape around him - not that there was much to see. The sky was dark, even darker than usual, the only clue that it was night high above this world. Some people said that blue skies still existed, far from here, in the parts of the world least touched by the flames, but Silver had never seen such a thing. He wanted to believe in it, but when dark gray clouds were the only lid his world had ever seen, it was all too easy to lose hope.
The only light came from the glowing lava below, illuminating the ruins of the ancient city around him. The skyscrapers had long ago fallen into disrepair, mere shells of their former glory, scorched by waved of flame and devastated by the monsters that tended to hang around such places. No one had lived here in hundreds of years, he knew that much - the city's proximity to Iblis' supposed source of power was the only reason he and Blaze ever came here. Everyone else called them crazy, said they would as soon meet a fiery and painful end in the ruins as find their target, but they didn't listen.
"Die in here or die out there," Blaze had said to him once, folding her arms and staring out at the scorched horizon. "Either way, we die. At least in here we can try to do some good."
Silver had been asking survivors of this world all his life why things were as they were, burned, ravaged by fire, by flaming monsters that sprung from the ground in bursts of heat. He always got the same answers - evasive shaking of heads, vague mutters, and always, always a finger pointing toward the flames.
Silver's train of thought was interrupted by a sudden surge in heat. He glanced down and pulled back in shock, still hovering, in time to avoid a spurt of twisting flame rising from below. He concentrated what little mental energy he had left from keeping himself aloft, pooling it in his hands, and thrust them forward. A bolt of cyan energy lanced forward, cutting through the flame spout and dispersing it. He stayed tense for another moment, prepared for another, but after a few seconds let his hands drop, staring down at the place the spout had been a moment before.
These flames. The flames everyone always pointed to, burning away at the world, spreading across the globe slowly but surely, toward settlements, people, the mythical blue sky, consuming everything in their path. They would never stop unless someone took a stand, delved into mysteries no one else would touch. Unless someone found a way to permanently destroy the Flames of Disaster - the eternal life form known as Iblis.
"Silver!"
A voice, calling him from below. Silver spun midair and looked down - his partner and best friend was running along the rooftops of destroyed skyscrapers, coming to a stop at the edge of one just beneath him.
"Blaze," he called back. "What's wrong?"
Blaze threw a hand behind her, pointing back, her tattered coat flapping in the hot wind. "Silver, he's back - he's appeared again!"
Silver's eyes widened.
"Where? Back there?"
"Closer to the middle of the city. The big lava pit. Come on - we need to go, now."
She spun and began to sprint back the way she'd come. Silver concentrated the remainder of his energy, curling into a ball for extra focus, then released it backwards - he went rocketing forward, able to keep pace with even her considerable speed.
"Wait!" he yelled down to her. "Just stop for a second, okay?"
She skidded to a halt, her boots kicking up the ash on the roof, as Silver landed next to her, cyan aura disappearing as his feet touched the ground. "Blaze - how can he be back already? It hasn't even been a week."
"I know," she said grimly.
Silver had barely opened his mouth to respond when the concrete of the roof beneath them erupted in flame. A fire worm's head burst out, followed by the rest of its body, rooted by a smoldering tail in the ground beneath it, its fiery mandibles hissing ominously. Silver and Blaze barely hesitated. Blaze's fingers alit with flame, which she wrapped the worm in, overpowering its relatively weak heat, while Silver grabbed the nearest bit of rubble with his mind - it glowed the same color as he had a moment before, and he launched it at the worm, which screeched and collapsed, disappearing in a puff of smoke.
Blaze turned back to Silver, entirely unfazed - they'd been fighting these things long enough, after all. "Come on, Silver. We can discuss this after we've taken care of Iblis."
Silver stared at her a moment longer before nodding and taking off running behind her, further into the heart of the city. She was right. She usually was.
Blaze had first seen Iblis' rising form from afar. She and Silver had split up earlier that evening to survey the landscape - look for any signs of Iblis' weaknesses, take out any of Iblis' monsters that they could to prevent them from spreading beyond the city ruins, the usual. And then she'd seen it, a familiar flaming figure climbing up from the lava pits some distance away.
Silver was right - there was no way Iblis should be back already. Their last battle with it had been only five days ago by her count, and the one before that spaced by another week, taking it down again and again as they traversed the abandoned ruins of the city. It was exhausting, thankless, lonely work, but they had come too far here to give up. Blaze was ready to stay in these ruins for the rest of her life trying to find a way to end this nightmare, and she knew Silver was too.
She felt better with him at her side as they ran together along the destroyed roads, fighting the monsters that cropped up in their path with an ease borne of years of practice. Blaze owed him a lot, most of all his friendship - the least she could do was stay with him as often as possible. She knew he often got nervous on his own.
Blaze leapt into the air and spun like an airborne top, striking hard against the head of a fire lizard which was spewing sparks in her direction. Her own variety of flame engulfed her body and cut through that of the corrupted creature, dissipating it into smoke. Silver was off to her right, picking up abandoned cars and bits of rubble with his psychokinetic abilities and smashing them into every enemy in his wake. Despite his naïveté, he was quite the power fighter - he'd saved her from a nasty end at the hands of a fire golem or worm too many times to count.
One last hard kick to the body of a lizard left them standing amidst puffs of smoke and scorched pavement, breathing hard. Blaze glanced back at Silver to see his psychic aura fade and his form sag slightly, recovering from the expended energy.
"Come on, Silver," she said, striding back to him. "Iblis isn't far from here. We need to hurry."
"I know," he said, raising his gaze to the edge of the chunk of pavement they stood on. Not far ahead, it cracked and dropped off into the pits below, but at least here they were offered some scant shelter from the endless, sweltering heat.
Not for long, though - not with Iblis so near.
They took off again, heading for the next solid foothold closer to their target. Silver lifted a chunk of rock and sent it flying into a precariously balanced piece of highway still suspended above the pit, and it wobbled, then tilted, sending ancient burned-out shells of cars sliding down, slamming into a couple of lizards hissing and pacing at the edge off into the fiery abyss below. Blaze took a running leap onto the road while Silver simply floated over, and before it could crack and topple over completely, they made their way over to the closest stretch of solid ruins, occupied by more monsters.
Endless, endless. They came from the flames - defeating them made no dent, they could easily reform after a time just like their creator. Blaze tried not to think about it and focused on striking them where it hurt. Worms, lizards, phoenixes spitting fireballs and giant golems throwing chunks of burning rock, all of them she dodged and struck back just as hard with her own flames as Silver fought at her side. He stunned a golem with a heavy blow from flying debris, and she finished it off with a kick to the exposed core of its head.
It was a familiar dance, and soon the way ahead was clear again. There was no way forward on the low road from here, so they began to climb - ruined buildings providing exposed struts to climb, Silver grabbing her hands and floating her across gaps she couldn't jump on her own. They ended up on the top of the building to their left, and leaning against it was a toppled skyscraper, providing a downward sloping path directly to their target.
"You can see him from here," Blaze said, pointing. A cluster of still-standing buildings partially blocked the view, but just beyond them she could make out the top of Iblis' head. Silver stood beside her, gazing outward.
"Yeah, I see him." He clenched his fists and glowed faintly. "Just lead the way."
More monsters awaited them on the trek down the slope of the building. Blaze rushed ahead, taking out the smaller ones in her path and ducking underneath a large intact pipe resting lopsided against a bit of rubble. Behind her she could hear the sounds of Silver shouting as he heaved chunk after chunk of debris into the creatures, and hisses filled her ears as their flames dispersed into the air. She paid his shouting no mind until she realized he was yelling her name.
"Blaze! Jump - NOW!"
She did so without thinking, leaping as high as she could, and the pipe she'd passed rolled underneath her, slamming into every creature in its way and sending them flying off the edges of the skyscraper, or else crushing them back into smoke. She landed and twisted to look back at Silver - he was standing and rubbing his hand at the back of his neck, looking a little abashed.
"Sorry," he said. "There was no time to warn you…."
Blaze straightened her coat. "I thought it was a good idea."
"Oh - yeah?"
"It worked, didn't it? Now come on. It's just a little further."
Silver nodded, his expression hardening once more, and raced on ahead. Blaze let a small, rare smile cross her face before following. He tried so hard. With him at her side, Blaze could almost believe that saving this world was possible.
The winds had begun to pick up as Silver and Blaze made their way through the ruined city, and some of them were definitely filled with more than dust and ash. Soft flames, too soft to burn, had begun to spiral around the area, all spinning around one central point - their target.
He and Blaze ran on, destroying some monsters in their path and leaving others for later in their haste - now that Silver knew where Iblis was, his blood had begun to boil. This being he hated with every fiber of his being was waiting for him, practically begging for another fight, and Silver wouldn't hesitate to give it to him.
A distorted roar echoed out across the city ruins, and as Blaze took care of the last few phoenixes in their path Silver raced on ahead, conserving his mental energy for his true target. He sprinted around a corner and immediately skidded to a halt, Blaze coming up on his right side.
Directly in front of them lay a huge lava pit, the air above it shimmering with intense heat. And standing in the center of it, unaffected by the molten mass (or more likely, Silver thought, drawing strength from it), stood an almost unimaginably huge creature, easily taller than every skyscraper around it. Its skin was made of black rock, cracked to show glowing, solid flame swirling on the inside. Horns grew from its face in haphazard locations, three poisonous green eyes stared down at them, and though its mouth was rimmed with sharp stony teeth, the real danger looked like its four arms, each ending in a clawed, blazing hand. It let another roar loose at the sky, shrieking so loud it would easily have been audible from the outskirts of the city.
Silver and Blaze stumbled back as a force of hot wind hit them, emanating from Iblis' rocky mouth. Silver was the first to recover, readying his hands and his mental energy as Iblis stared down at the two with its three eerie eyes.
Rage was all Silver knew as he screamed up at it. "Come on, you monster!"
It responded with a gravelly growl, opening its mouth and blasting them with more hot air.
"Silver," Blaze said, staring up at it, "this is all you. I can't fight him from here."
He glanced over at her and nodded. She was a close-quarters fighter. From here, he could hit Iblis at range.
"Don't worry," she said, spinning on her heel and walking back the way they'd come. "I'll make sure none of his minions sneak up on us while you take him down."
"Got it."
Silver grabbed a nearby bit of rubble with his psychokinesis and held it there, watching Iblis. It bent low, baring its teeth at him, clearly recognizing him as its main challenger. Just as the crust covering the top of its head came into view, Silver let his missile fly, striking it squarely and causing the rock to crack, just a little. It was a game he had played many times, one that Blaze had once amusingly called "Whack-an-Iblis," and he was practiced at it from years of experience. Before Iblis could raise its head he flung several more solid bits of stone, creating a sizable dent in his head plate before it reared back and shrieked at the sky.
"Hah!" Silver yelled. "How do you like that?"
Iblis responded by flinging its arms back and thrusting its chest forward. From its molten midsection, several flaming boulders each easily as big as Silver himself came rocketing out, straight toward his position on the ground. He leapt into the air and hovered, avoiding the boulders as they crashed down on the pavement he had been standing on, scattering bits of hot rock everywhere. Several remained relatively intact, fire still flickering over their surface, and he grabbed those and hurled them back at Iblis as well, breaking two of its facial horns clean off.
At the loss of its horns, only one still remaining on its head, Iblis glowed ominously brighter, and reached to the side. Silver watched, at the ready but still apprehensive, as it used all four of its hands to grab hold of a nearby skyscraper. With a deafening grinding noise, Iblis yanked the entire building straight out of the ground, and raised it over its head.
Silver swallowed and decided now was a good time to run.
He sprinted straight to the side at top speed as Iblis began to bring the skyscraper, which was already beginning to glow as his flames spread across its surface, down onto the pavement. A shadow cast over him as he ran, and he pushed himself even harder, using his psychokinesis to try to boost his speed.
Harsh light bathed his form a split second before the building hit. A tremendous boom rang out as it shattered into chunks, and Silver felt the ground shift underneath him with the sheer force of the hit, throwing him to the ground. He rolled and managed to concentrate his power catching any stray debris that flew his way, but he'd avoided the worst of it. The gap he and Blaze had come through was completely blocked by tons and tons of rubble - if Blaze was still back there fighting, she'd find a way back over sooner or later, but until then Silver was now truly on his own.
He stood, still holding the bits of rubble in his mental grasp, and whirled on Iblis. Its size made speedy movements difficult - it was still recovering from the momentum of its last attack, so Silver seized the chance to hurl every bit of debris he could pick up at Iblis' head until he'd thoroughly exhausted himself. But it worked - the pieces crashed through its reinforced plating, and the last horn, as well as the last bits of solid rock, fell away entirely. Iblis let out another furious screech, the softer, glowing parts of its head now exposed to the elements.
Figuring he had a moment of respite to recharge, Silver breathed heavily and turned back to see Blaze already clambering to the top of the smashed pile of rubble and shattered glass from the skyscraper. "Silver!" she shouted. "Don't let your guard down yet!"
He whirled again to see that Iblis had recovered faster than expected - it was already rearing back once more to expel more flaming boulders from its chest cavity. Silver sprinted back to the rubble pile near Blaze as the boulders crashed down where he'd been standing, grabbing a few on the way over and flinging them back. Several impacted harmlessly onto Iblis' chest and arms, but two of them hit their target - Iblis' eyes.
It screamed, nearly blinded, but its middle eye was still functional. In a frenzied fury, Iblis began to lean forward.
"Silver," Blaze called from behind him, sounding nervous, "he's going to - "
"Just trust me!"
Silver knelt and flattened his palm against the large piece of debris he was standing on as Iblis' remaining good eye leveled with his face. The chunk began to glow cyan as Silver focused his power into it. Iblis' mouth opened wide just as Silver, concentrating hard, raised the chunk - and himself - off the ground, shooting upward.
Iblis spewed flames from its mouth at the rubble pile, seemingly oblivious that its opponent was floating above its head.
Then Silver stood and kicked downward, throwing all his mental energy into the kick and sending the chunk rocketing down, straight into Iblis' center eye.
The force of the blow crushed its head against the sharp remains of the skyscraper, so brutally it didn't even have time for a death scream. As Silver half floated, half fell back down to land next to Blaze, Iblis' body began to melt, chunks of solid rock falling from its form and splashing down into the pit below. As they watched, panting, its figure became simply a shapeless mass and dissolved into nothing but more lava, oozing into the pit and creating a strange whirlpool effect as its energy circled the area.
Around them, the firestorm continued, but weaker than before. Iblis' power here was already fading.
"Looks like we stopped it for now," Blaze said, staring down into the lava and folding her arms. She appeared entirely unfazed by the disturbing sight, but Silver felt a sick feeling beginning to rise up within him.
"Yeah," he said, bitterness coloring his tone. "But it'll just rise up from its ashes again."
"At least this counts as a victory, Silver. We haven't lost a fight with it yet."
"Yeah, not the one from a few days ago, or the week before that, or the week before that…." Disgust and disappointment bubbled up inside him, into his throat, and in a sudden burst of anger he turned and slammed his fist into the concrete wall of the building next to him. "What's the point of all this? It'll never end! Ever!"
"Silver," she said tersely, but he ignored her.
"We've been fighting Iblis for how many years, and he always comes back, and we're no closer to finding how to beat him and end this than we were when we started! And he's getting stronger every time, you've seen it, which means we're running out of time and if we can't figure this out soon then he'll probably just get too strong and then nobody will be able to defeat him, permanently or not, and the world will end for real this time! Blaze, we can't!"
"Calm down, Silver!"
"Then tell me what we should do!" Silver squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the view of the devastated world around him. "How can we completely destroy Iblis? How?"
Blaze went silent, and so did Silver. He could hear her shuffling her feet around behind him, but didn't turn, just rested his forehead on the wall in front of him, fist still balled up against it.
He'd never before felt so hopeless. Blaze had called him naïve more than once, but it was always his optimism and determination that kept them going. He knew that. But now… even though he'd won the fight, he could feel the resolve draining out of him.
He couldn't keep going on like this forever.
It was a long, long moment before someone broke the silence - but it wasn't Blaze, or Silver.
"You need the truth, of course."
Silver's eyes opened.
"Just as a flower comes from a seed, or a chicken comes from an egg, everything has an origin."
Silver turned to find Blaze staring up toward the top of the rubble pile, and followed her gaze. Standing at the very top, looking strangely out of place in the destroyed landscape, was another hedgehog like him - only this one was black, with gray stripes running along his quills and limbs, staring up at the fading firestorm around the put. Unlike Blaze and Silver, covered in burns and scars as they were from a lifetime of battle, the hedgehog's fur was completely smooth and untouched. Even his shoes and gloves seemed spotlessly clean, and gray rings were fastened around his wrists and ankles. But the details that sent little shivers up Silver's spine was the fact that this hedgehog had no mouth - just a smooth expanse of skin across his muzzle, nothing more.
Silver stepped a little closer to Blaze.
"Who are you?" Blaze said. "We're supposed to be the only ones in these ruins."
The hedgehog turned his gaze downward slowly to reveal vivid green eyes. "I am Mephiles," came his voice, deep and somehow managing to carry easily over the noise of the firestorm. It seemed to emanate from him even without a mouth, and Silver wondered how. Perhaps it was a birth defect? Or perhaps he had some kind of strange power, different from the ones Silver and Blaze possessed?
"I'm Silver," he said after a moment.
Blaze nodded almost imperceptibly at Mephiles; Silver knew she wasn't keen on trusting strangers, least of all those in ruins such as these. "Blaze," she said shortly.
"I couldn't help but overhear your conversation," Mephiles said, eyes seeming to pierce through them. "And I believe I may have a solution for your problem."
"Is that so," Blaze said flatly. Mephiles just nodded.
"What do you mean?" Silver said.
"You wish to stop the Flames of Disaster from spreading?" Mephiles' gaze once more turned skyward, the firestorm from Iblis' latest defeat almost gone by now. "Then you need to find the being originally responsible for this catastrophe."
Silver's heart began to race again. "Is that the answer to our problem?" Silver pointed up at Mephiles. "Tell me - do you know who it is?"
Mephiles turned his gaze down slowly on them, Blaze, staring up at him with her arms defensively crossed, and Silver, hardly daring to hope.
"Follow me," he said simply, "and I'll show you."
Mephiles led the pair of them along several intact streets, walking quickly and decisively as if he was familiar with the terrain. This only baffled Silver further. No one ever came into the city ruins, no one except himself and Blaze anyway. Most people considered entering the ruins an automatic death sentence, filled as they were wit hordes of monsters, boiling lava pits, precarious drops, little to no food, and, of course, the rampaging form of Iblis itself. But Mephiles seemed almost at ease - and during the short walk no more monsters appeared. The ruins were silent but for the wind.
After a few minutes of walking, Mephiles stopped in front of a bit of cliffside, against which the city was set. Directly in front of them Silver could see that a hole had been drilled into the rock, with a bent, dented slab of metal lying just inside, clearly a door that had been smashed down long ago, judging by the dust and ash that covered it. Mephiles turned and gestured for them to follow him inside, and after exchanging a brief glance, Blaze and Silver followed.
The tunnel was dark, but Silver could tell that the rock walls soon turned to smooth metal, and a dim light was emanating from a door against the right-hand wall just ahead. Mephiles led them through it, into a room that seemed nearly untouched by the devastation just outside. Desks and filing cabinets lined the walls, chairs still pushed in as though the employees had simply left it behind at the end of an ordinary workday, and on the opposite side of the room a computer screen glowed softly. Silver knew that some parts of the world still had electricity, but he didn't know of anywhere nearby that did - he assumed this city's power supply would have cut off hundreds of years ago. Somehow, this one still worked, but the screen was currently black.
On the floor directly in front of the computer screen, a circle was set into the floor, looking smoother than the metal plating surrounding it. Silver wondered what it was for.
"What is this place?" Blaze said, staring around at the room as Silver followed half a step behind her. It was significantly cooler in here than it was outside, soothing after weeks of unrelenting heat.
"In the past, this room held a working teleporter," Mephiles said, gesturing at the computer and the circle on the floor. "It led to the military base on the mountain nearby. But since the disaster, it has remained defunct. The computer that operated it, however, still works."
"How do you know all this?" Silver asked in awe, moving forward to scuff his boot curiously against the edge of the teleporter circle.
Mephiles came up behind him, Blaze close behind. "Listen closely," he said, and Silver turned back to look at him. His eyes were intense. "This world exists in a timeline that should never have come to pass. So to fix this present timeline, you must change the past."
Blaze furrowed her brow as Silver stared at him. "What?" he said blankly. "But… that's impossible."
"Not with my help," Mephiles said, gesturing to himself, "because I have the power to travel through time."
Blaze hummed doubtfully next to him, but Silver's jaw dropped.
"No way!" The power to move things with one's mind or summon flame in a world that was already full of it was one thing, but to manipulate time itself….
Mephiles moved closer. "In order to change the past and avert this future, you must eliminate the individual who awakened Iblis. The… Iblis Trigger, if you will."
Silver went abruptly still.
Blaze crossed her arms slowly. "'Eliminate.' You mean kill…?"
The only answer was a silent nod.
Despite the heat of the ruins, Silver felt himself grow slightly cold. For all his fighting prowess, he had never actually taken someone's life before. The monsters he and Blaze fought were manifestations of the Flames of Disaster, Iblis' power - defeating them only dissipated that power, leaving it free to reform again in the future. But to actually kill someone….
Silver closed his eyes for a long time, then reopened them slowly. "So if we… eliminate… this 'Iblis Trigger'… our world will be saved?"
Mephiles nodded again. Silver glanced over at Blaze, who was watching him carefully, and he hoped very hard that she was not judging him for considering this.
"The Day of Disaster." Mephiles turned to the computer and tapped at the control board, and the screen went from a dim glowing black to alive and bright. "I have found records of the event on this machine. This is when Iblis was freed and his Flames released into the world."
Windows began to appear, one by one on the screen - photos of green hills burning in the distance, some kind of nighttime festival, a battleship painted in red and yellow - and, notably, a red-haired human girl in a white dress. Text underneath her photograph labeled her as "Princess Elise III, Reigning Sovereign of the Kingdom of Soleanna."
"Is she the Iblis trigger?" Silver said, already disturbed at the thought of having to kill someone such as her. She looked harmless, innocent, her eyes a bit sad - not the kind of person he would have expected to bring devastation to the globe.
"No," Mephiles said, and Silver turned to see that he was holding something in his hand - a large purple gem, pulsing with power. Even from several feet away Silver could feel the air tingling around it, washing over his skin and making him shiver slightly. Behind him, he heard Blaze gasp slightly.
"You have this person to blame."
Mephiles held the gem out to him, and hesitantly, still uncertain what it was, Silver reached out and wrapped his fingers around it. He turned to Blaze, who looked somewhat shocked at its appearance, but she reached out and placed her hand atop the gem, so that it rested between their palms.
It began as a faint tickle, making him want to scratch his palm, but the power soon grew stronger, lancing along the cyan markings along his gloves, the ones that enhanced his abilities and allowed him to focus them so accurately. He hissed, the energy intensifying almost to the point of pain, and Blaze squeezed her eyes shut. And then Silver's vision began to waver, then dissolve.
All he could see was flame. It was an unwelcome sight after the relative calm of the teleporter room - it roiled everywhere, seemingly in absence of any kind of fuel but simply existing, as though the air itself was being consumed. And then he saw it - a speck of blue in the distance, growing rapidly. The flames flickered around it, but as it grew closer the form resolved itself into the figure of a hedgehog. Heart pounding, Silver took in every detail - the plain white gloves, red and white running sneakers, spines long and brushed straight back. Then the hedgehog turned, and Silver saw his eyes. Bright green, just like those of Iblis.
He gasped, suddenly standing back in the teleporter room. Across from him, Blaze looked about as shell-shocked as he felt. The vision had been so intense, so real.
Silver stumbled back slightly, fingers tightening automatically around the gem as it threatened to slip from his grasp. It glimmered softly in the wake of the vision, still radiating the power it had transferred to him and Blaze. "What… was that?" he said, turning slowly back to Mephiles, who was watching the pair of them intently.
"That was the Iblis Trigger." Mephiles reached out and grasped the emerald, plucking it out of Silver's grasp and tucking it away behind him. "Your target - if you accept this task."
Silver dropped his gaze to the ground.
"Silver," Blaze said softly from behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder at her. "We've been searching for a way to end this nightmare for years. Now we're being given a chance to end it before it even begins. I say we take his offer."
Silver nodded slowly.
A fresh life… a new life. A life free of pain and misery and darkness, if he and Blaze just completed this one task. This entire world, everyone he'd ever known, erased forever for the greater good.
Well, there was no one left in this world for him but Blaze, anyway.
Silver raised his head and looked back up at Mephiles as Blaze stepped up beside him, looking resolute. "All right," he said. "We'll do it."
"Agreed," Blaze said.
Mephiles nodded in grim approval. "I will send us back in time to the point when the Iblis Trigger was still alive. But you should know - I can only bring us to his last known location before the disaster. You will only have three days to complete your task - else, the Flames of Disaster will be released at sundown on the third day, and our chance at saving this world will be gone."
Silver swallowed. "And uh, saying we do fail the first time - could you just bring us back to… try again?"
Mephiles stared hard at him, and he felt his face redden. "I would hope that you're not anticipating failure before your task has even begun, or else I have chosen the wrong champions for the cause…."
Silver averted his eyes. "Uh - no, of course, uh…."
"We won't fail," Blaze said next to him, and he wished he could have the same confidence her voice held.
"Then prepare yourselves."
Mephiles raised both hands in front of his face, and a ball of strange, swirling purple energy appeared in the center of the room. Silver stared at it, entranced, as it grew, spreading over Mephiles' form until it had passed over Silver and Blaze where they stood. Silver felt suddenly queasy, like he had eaten something bad, and a bitter cold washed over him. His vision dissolved again, but this time, all he saw was the energy, swirling around and around him until he wasn't even sure he still existed - and the world was gone.
