Chapter 1 – A Cole Winter's Night
Time passes more quickly when you only have three days to live.
The prison cell, empty of all but the most pitiable of the pitiable, the condemned, the lost, the wretched. Not even the rats envied her, nor the spiders. She envied the spiders. The dead ones most.
No light came directly in. Day, night, all the same. All too short. And she was all too human before the executioner. Three days left, or was it two?
The cold didn't stay away. The architect knew what he was doing, getting a fat bonus for making the dungeon the last choice for a place to spend your final days. Cold, dirty, dark. Wet, too. Water somewhere. The dripping was more than she could take, reminding her that time wouldn't stand still. And still wouldn't. And still wouldn't. Drip, drip, drip.
Changing of the guard meant close to mealtime. Scraps. Fight the rats for them. She didn't care for the rats. She didn't care for the food. Only six meals left anyway.
Drip, drip, drip.
She had a cough. Couldn't sleep; sore throat, headache. Nose full of stink. Bug bites. Scratching took energy, though. Energy required food, and food required fighting the rats. The rats got most of it. She'd be lucky to get enough to make four meals. Six meals left, and she wouldn't even get them. She hated the rats.
She killed one of them, but it bit her first. Bitter. All of the food was bitter. No one puts work into cooking for the condemned.
Drip. Won't it end? Drip. Is there nobody there? Drip. She wanted to die so her ghost could haunt the place. Drip. They'd all pay when she haunted them. Drip.
Buzz. A wasp circled her head. Worse than the rats because she couldn't see it. Harder to kill. Still painful. And loud. Anyone else would think that some noise, any noise, would make her less lonely, but she knew better. Buzz and drip are worse than nothing.
Worse than nothing, the condemned. How many days was it, again? Drip, drip, drip. How many drips left? How many drips until they came to get her?
Maybe someone else would get her first. Some hero. Save her. This food made her crazy, wanting a hero. There were no heroes in the Empire. There were no good men. If there were good men, she wouldn't be in prison.
Drip, drip, clang. A man came near. Big man. Dead inside. This was her hero, come to save her. Her terrifying hero. Her escape. Cure the headache by removing the problem.
Soon, no more condemned. Only drip, drip, drip, drip.
Scream.
XXX
"I heard you," said Ward Cole. "Another flashback?"
June Cole panted. "Another nightmare."
"You know you aren't in danger any longer. You're with me now, not with them."
"I know that."
Ward Cole pulled his wife closer. "And our visitors will be here soon."
"Who?"
"Must have been a bad one. Our son. He's coming to visit. Bringing a lady friend, too."
June Cole nodded and buried her head in her pillow. "Pray they arrive safely."
XXX
A windy afternoon meant a chilly road for Celes Chere and Locke Cole. Locke and Celes, officially lovebirds. The scenery wasn't much, but Locke wasn't looking at it. All the good sights were next to him. Locke had to pick between the ring on Celes's left hand and the dress on the rest of her for Most Brilliant Object In View. He chose her face, instead, which went from pale to flushed after he did so. The hand with the ring went from In View to Hidden Under His Hand. Her head went to his shoulder.
The horse in front marked their progress with a steady clip-clop, clip-clop down the road. The carriage in tow rumbled along, ride as smooth as silk. The driver up front didn't disturb the happy couple for fear of losing his tip. He only wanted to make someplace in time for dinner.
Locke felt warm breath on his neck. It came from a woman in need of a little comfort. Former Imperial General or not. The Generals were great in war but only fair in love. Celes was less than confident that she could win over a family used to living under the heel of her old boss. Locke wanted her to know that she had nothing to worry about. He wanted her to relax. The kind words and the warm hugs and the gentle caresses managed the relaxing part, but the worry wouldn't go away. He couldn't even get it out of himself, much less his love.
Looked at that way, he was afraid. He was afraid of something cataclysmic yet vague. Something would go wrong. Something had to. All the pretty words worked fine in the short term, but now that he was done winning her over, she had to do the same with his family, and the more he thought about that, the more he shivered.
Maybe dinner would help things. The sun almost gone, he signaled for the driver to pull over at The Happy Octopus. Just what the doctor ordered, and just where he had his reservations. Dinner reservations were better than reservations about introducing his love, anyway, and a couple of courses over a couple of candles might help Celes drown her jitters in cheer.
Failing that, in beer.
XXX
"Even your fashion sense. It's exquisite."
"You're just saying that." Celes returned his gaze.
"No, really. You look like a dream. A good dream. You make everyone else seem dull by comparisoin."
"You're a flatterer."
"I mean it. I mean, compare yourself to…" Locke trailed off. His eye seemed to have caught something out of the ordinary near the reception desk. "Those guys. Look."
Celes turned to see what had his attention. It turned out to be a gathering of dark figures dressed in white robes with green hoods. About a half dozen of them stood inside the restaurant already, and more were filing in the front door. Their faces were hidden, and their body language betrayed nothing of their intentions. The only things they were doing were walking and chanting.
Chanting. In some unfamiliar and probably archaic tongue. The figure at the head seemed to be chanting directly at the maitre'd, who looked like he found such assertiveness irritating. The noise grew louder as more and more of hooded somethings crowded into the lobby.
I've seen them somewhere before, thought Celes. But where?
"The Cult of Kefka," Locke said, almost as if he were reading Celes's mind. "What are they doing here?"
The lead cultist grasped a gold medallion around his neck and shoved it in the face of the maitre'd. The maitre'd responded by growing more and more panicky. He was clearly sweating, and he began to have something like a nervous twitch. Clearly, wanted the cultists to leave. Clearly, the cultists had other ideas.
All at once, the lights in the building went out. Celes could still see by the last rays of the setting sun, but she could no longer distinguish individual cultists, except by their eyes. Two pale yet piercing orbs peered out from under each hood but the leaders, where there were three. Apart from those, the whole cult looked like a pulsating blob of silhouetted robe-covered flesh. The chanting grew louder.
Several of the cultists raised their hands threateningly. At four locations around the rim of the crowd, swirls of red fire materialized and illuminated a portion of the room. The eerie firelight reflected off the leader's medallion in such a way as to make him look like a mythological devil figure wearing a victim's soul on a chain around his neck. He stretched his arms in front of him, his eyes flashed, and jolts of lightning shot from the tips of his fingers to the floor in front of the maitre'd. After hitting the floor, the magical bursts gathered into spheres, grew, and gradually assumed vaguely humanoid shapes. After a few seconds, color features began to form on the outlines of these shapes.
"That's us!" Celes whispered to her lover. "They're after us, aren't they?"
"We'd best slip away, fast." Lock grabbed Celes by the hand and attempted to lead her away from the table.
"No, wait," Celes hissed. "Look, they have the perimeter of the room surrounded. We can't just run out the back."
Sure enough, under the cover of partial darkness and the distraction created by the pyrotechnics, members of the Cult of Kefka had assumed positions near all of the windows and other exists, sealing Celes and Locke off from any potential escape route.
"Just great," said Locke. "What now?"
"We'll have to hold our ground. Fight."
"I can't let them hurt you!"
"Darling, we've both faced worse."
"But we're unprepared and unarmed, and we no longer have Espers to help us. We have to run."
"Since when have you ever needed Espers to fight for you?"
"I usually have at least a knife."
"Fine, then. Maybe they won't notice us. Let's try to blend in."
More cultists flowed through the front entrance every second. They looked as though their numbers could have been limitless, and the more who came inside, the less time it would take them to search the restaurant for their prey. Celes felt a bead of sweat form on her forehead. Her right hand moved slowly over to her butter knife. As her fingers closed around the handle, the chanting grew louder still.
And then, a new sound intermingled with the crazed voices. The new sound was soft, high-pitched, and melodic, in stark contrast with the chants. Celes turned toward the origin of the sound and saw through the light of the magical fires that a woman was standing atop one of the dinner tables playing a flute. Of everyone in the entire restaurant, the woman was the only one to look at all peaceful. Even that was short lived, though; after about ten bars of music that in any other setting would have been soothing, the woman stopped, waved her arms frantically, and shouted for everyone in the room to duck down. Her face went from calm to stormy.
Celes and Locke, having no desire to stand out, obeyed the order to duck. Both dropped to the floor, and Locke took Celes in his arms. Both waited to see what would happen next.
For nearly exactly a half minute, precisely nothing happened. The Cult of Kefka stood motionless, with the leader gazing ominously at the brave flute player and everyone else standing still as stone. Then, the room got darker. Slowly at first and then more rapidly, the light in the windows began to disappear behind a black cloud. The same happened in every window, as if the cloud were enveloping the building for the very purpose of blocking out all of the sunlight. Soon the only illumination left came from swirling fire in the lobby. And with a puff and a crash, even those went out.
The crash was the crash of windows breaking. All of them at once. From all directions, glass burst inward with a noise that startled even the grim cultists, whose chanting morphed at once into a cacophony of wailing and screaming. The regular restaurant patrons screamed, too, but when they did it, it sounded human. The cultists sounded like something, but that something was far from human. It was the kind of something one would expect to hear from a dying behemoth.
Accompanying all of this noise was the squawking of thousands of birds. Birds, which had just burst through the windows. Birds, which had been summoned by the mysterious melody of the tabletop flutist. Birds, which were scratching, biting, and clawing at the Cult of Kefka. The birds would have been formidable in any environment, if only by virtue of sheer numbers and speed, but in dark room with only a few narrow paths of escape for their victims to attempt to use, the birds were close to unstoppable. The moans of terror emanating from the doomed cultists became mixed with cries of pain and panic. Those anywhere near doors or windows attempted to climb or run to safety, with limited success. Those not stood no chance. Even the leader, only a minute ago the intimidator, found himself fighting for his life. Before long, the lights under his hood went out.
Five minutes were all it took for the birds to pick the restaurant clean of the cult. That accomplished, the majority of them flew back out through the broken windows, letting what was left of the sun back in. Someone managed to fix the artificial lights, revealing some innumerable mass of corpses littering the floor. There were dead birds aplenty, but the robed figures lay far more prominent amongst the debris. Some had been impaled by shards of window glass, but most had been messily clawed and pecked to death. Some scavenger birds remained to feed on the cultist bodies that had not yet been completely picked over.
Above it all stood none other than Arion, the waitress. Her face was impossible to read, but her quivering body betrayed how distraught she was at seeing the carnage around her. She had saved at least two lives, but their salvation had come at a cost.
And speaking of costs, the restaurant manager, heretofore cowering in a corner, suddenly had the presence of mind to begin to berate Arion for causing so much property damage. No one else had the courage to speak at all.