A/N: My description of the Dollet catacombs is largely indebted to those beneath Paris and Rome, as well as my own experiences in my hometown's infamous underground tunnels. I have a thing for tombs, but I promise this will be the last one for a while.

Chapter 13: Necropolis

Seifer asked everyone he knew (which turned out to be mostly old coworkers), and while all of them could recount tales of their cousin's best friend's brother once getting lost in the catacombs, none of them could provide directions to an entrance. The reason for this became discouragingly clear the moment they approached Captain Til Colburn, by far the most reputable of Seifer's contacts.

"It's been illegal to go down there for more than fifty years," he said.

"Why?" Seifer asked.

"This guy, Eman DeGrassi...he got lost down there and died. He had this plan to use the catacombs to drill up into the bank after hours and rob it. But the batteries in his flashlight died. He was missing for more than ten years before someone finally found his body. Buried him down there, too. And after that, all the entrances on public property were closed up. They welded manholes shut and everything." Captain Colburn crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. "Are you all back here to protect Dollet?"

"Protect Dollet from what?"

"Gabadia. They declared war."

"Yeah. But not on Dollet," Seifer replied.

"They'll be here anyway." He paused and his sharp gaze narrowed. "Why do you need into the catacombs?"

Blankly, Seifer turned and looked at Quistis who jumped in with a hasty, "We're doing some research. They could be a good place to get civilians out of harm's way if Garden has to come in and push the Galbadians out again."

"Damn people think the whole world is theirs," the captain swore. "They forget that we were here first. Deling City is built on top the ruins of an old Dollet fort, you know. And they won't even let us have this one small harbor to ourselves."

Fifteen minutes of bitter complaining later, they managed to escape Captain Colburn's company, but were still no closer to finding a way underground.

"This sucks! It's right there!" Zell stomped on the cobblestone street. "Right under the road! And we can't freaking get to it!"

Quistis sat down on the edge of the fountain and stretched her legs out. The polished granite was cool under her palms and the whisper of running water was soothing to her ears, strained by Zell's shrill voice and Fujin's shouting.

"He just said all the public entrances were closed, right?" Seifer said. "So, what if we find a private one? Someone around here probably still has one just sitting in their back yard."

"How we gonna do that?"

"ASK!" Fujin suggested.

Zell ran his hand through his hair so that it stuck up at even more wild angles than usual. "We can't just walk around advertising that we're about to break the law. We'll end up in prison. Especially once they see we're with you, Seifer."

"I'm not wanted in Dollet."

"Says you."

"Anyway, I can't solve all our problems. This is supposed to be a team, isn't it? About time someone else besides me contributed."

Both Seifer and Zell turned then to gaze directly at Quistis and looked disappointed when she shrugged. What were they expecting? She couldn't just call together a heavy construction team and break through the pavement, or convince the Dollet Dukedom to grant them special privileges because an old legend said someday the world might end. Despite that, Seifer's idea was a good one. They would have to find an entrance on private property. And then they'd have to hope the property owner had warm fuzzy feelings about SeeDs.

Seifer fished a single golden gil from his pocket and flicked it in a long arc over the top of Quistis's head. She heard it splash into the water behind her.

"For luck," he explained, then sat down next to her.

He was still doing that -- getting uncomfortably close -- and she thought it was probably just to unnerve her. After he'd kissed her on the deck, she'd been careful to keep her distance and even more careful to avoid verbal sparring matches. When he threw a punch, she ducked. This seemed to be his new method of annoyance, because she knew he had to notice the way her breath hitched when his arm pressed into her side, or his thigh rested next to hers, or his scent tickled her nose. She scooted away from him, turning her face so that the breeze blew against it, and found herself looking across Dollet's central square at the public library which was gleaming white in the morning sun.

"Hey..." An idea sprang to life in her head. "Why don't we check the library? They might have maps, news articles...all kinds of information on the catacombs and where the various entrances are located."

"Sounds like a great plan, Quisty!" Zell said. He had a soft spot for libraries, or maybe just librarians.

"AGREED."

Quistis turned to Seifer and smiled, taking pride in her small victory. "Looks like you're out-voted."

"I don't remember voting."

"It's hardly a mystery what you were going to say."

He grumbled something inaudible before following them into the library.

At such an early hour, the library was nearly deserted except for a few employees shelving books and working at desks. The air smelled sweet with warm cream and nutmeg from the small coffee stand near the entrance -- a fountain of life for those few industrious researchers in the community and a commercial lure for those who preferred magazines to classic literature. Quistis took a deep breath and felt immediately at home. This was where she excelled. Hours of study and rampant perfectionism had ravaged her social life as a cadet until her fingers were shadowy with ink from time spent consuming binders of self-study exams; and her developing body had been overtaxed from long weapons training sessions where she was taught movements and maneuvers, theoretical battle technique. It was all conceptual, all in her head. And it had been blissfully fulfilling.

"I'll check for maps," Zell offered. He walked up to the nearest librarian, blushed charmingly, and asked for help.

Seifer looked like he felt nauseous. "I'm going to pretend I never saw that." He turned to Quistis. "So, what do we do?"

"We...research."

Seifer and Fujin glanced at one another, then at the bookshelves, apparently at a loss for where to begin. Their expressions woke the semi-dormant instructor in Quistis, who immediately began formulating a lecture on how to do everything from browse old fashioned card catalogs to cross reference terms in a database. Knowing the speech would only irritate Seifer, she managed to swallow the volumes of knowledge begging to be shared and motioned for them to follow her.

She sat Fujin down in a local history room filled with drawers of old newspapers and legal documents, then left Seifer under her watchful eye, hoping the two of them might be able to accomplish something together.

Alone, Quistis waded into the stacks. After so many days of tight co-habitation, the books were welcomingly silent and still. She trailed down the rows, running her fingers along their spines, and breathed. For the first time since Trabia, she felt like she had the room to really fill her lungs again.

Centered. Peaceful. Clear.

At length, she ended up seated in a large office chair at the back of the library, browsing through a neglected catalog of microfiche cards. The library only kept hard copies of newspapers for ten years, a librarian told her, and anything older than that was archived on film to save space. So she relaxed in her chair, soaking up the silence, and fed card after card into the large microfiche reader. She scanned past news articles at a blistering pace on the wide, flat screen. The work was mindless but good relaxation. It was almost mediation. Text and grainy photos whistled past her eyes. She put a new card in.

Half an hour passed, maybe more, before a headline arrested her attention:Local Woman & Child Missing at Sea.

It wasn't related to the catacombs. It was extraneous. But she couldn't scroll past. Not knowing that the woman's photograph was tucked away at the bottom of her duffel bag, carefully folded between her delicates. She scooted closer to the reader and shifted the card to the left where the newspaper had published a photograph of a young, windblown pub owner, captioned, "Selune, husband of the missing woman."

Selune.

Quistis devoured the details. She read about the storm that capsized the woman's boat and about those that had survived. She felt more keenly knowing how the story would end the anguish of the pub owner's fear and doubt. And for the first time, she put names with the faces she'd been carrying in her pocket. She moved to the next card and another article. Then to another, ingesting photo after photo of thin, blonde Helene Selune.

In one particularly high pitched article where hopelessness and desperation dripped from every quote the author had managed to wring from the poor pub owner, they published a photograph of the child. She was a pudgy little girl with a pelt of thick, blonde hair and large clear eyes. Helene Selune was holding her, clutching the baby to her chest and smiling down so that all her teeth were showing.

Quistis had never seen it before, but she recognized it immediately -- love, pure and true.

Her heart twisted when she realized she'd missed that as a child. And it pulled tighter when she realized she'd probably never feel the pleasure of cradling a newborn in her arms as an adult. Career SeeDs weren't encouraged to have children. And what sort of mother would bring a baby into a world rotting with war?

Still, she was comforted to think, to imagine, that the content child in the photograph could have been her. The time frame was right, and they looked enough alike. If she thought about it long enough, and stared hard enough at the image burning across her screen, she could almost believe the baby hadn't drowned in the bay. Perhaps she'd been rescued and taken to an orphanage where she'd grown to be lonely and hard. Even the tragic loss of one parent was better than none at all. Squall had somehow managed to find his father after years apart. Her life didn't have to be any different, if she could just believe this baby who'd died was still a wandering spirit without a home, casting about as Quistis Trepe.

Seifer sat down across the desk and startled her, making her push the card through the reader with a sudden shove.

"We aren't getting anywhere," he complained. "How about you? Find anything?"

"Um...no. Not much progress here either."

She blushed, but Seifer didn't notice. He was too wrapped up in his own misery. "This is about the most boring idea you've ever had. And that's saying something. I took your class, so I know. Zell's probably off getting it on in a stack of old magazines with that librarian, and I'm sitting here flipping through five year old classified ads. Something is seriously wrong with that."

Quistis shrugged.

"Anyway, I'm goin' to get something at that coffee stand thing near the front door," Seifer announced and made a face. "I don't even like coffee. And now they've got all those stupid cup sizes, and all these weird specialty drinks. You know? But I figure they might have food or something. Want anything?"

His offer surprised her, and she immediately became suspicious of his motives.

"No. Thanks anyway."

"Yeah," he said and got up from his chair with a groan. "Don't kill yourself or anything while I'm gone."

Feeling as if she'd narrowly escaped getting caught breaking the rules, Quistis settled back into searching the microfiche cards for any hint of the catacombs. She dug back past the date of Helene Selune's death and saw fragments of the couple in more cheerful times. Time peeled away, shedding their sorrows and their tragedy until they emerged a happy, enterprising young family all filled with hope and pluck, oblivious to the cruel fate the universe was preparing to deal them.

Quistis had scanned through four cards with no mention of the Selunes or the catacombs when her interests unexpectedly collided.

"Local pub expands cellar, breaks into underground crypt," she read quietly to herself.

Destiny brushed by.

And then, so did Seifer. "I know you said you didn't want anything. But it's probably just because you're fucking poor. So I bought you this...red stuff. It's got cream or foam or whatever the hell that is, so I thought you'd like it. Don't spill it," he admonished as he reached her desk and held the plastic cup out toward her. "You're not supposed to have it up here around all the books and shit."

She ignored the drink in his outstretched hand and shoved her microfiche cards back into their drawer.

"Have you seen Zell?" she asked instead.

"Not lately."

"Go find him."

"You go find him. I've done my good deed for the day." He forced the cool cup into her hands and wrapped her fingers around it with his own. "Did you find something?"

"Maybe." She took a sip of her drink. Raspberry cream. "There used to be an entrance in the pub's cellar. It might not be accessible anymore, but it's worth a shot."

They fetched Fujin and managed to locate Zell standing at one of the library's photocopiers, still being assisted by the same librarian. She was loading sheets of eleven by seventeen paper into the copier's bottom drawer as Zell loudly recounted battling Timat in Ultimecia's castle.

"It's got this flare attack, right?" he said. "So it just floats there and gets this fireball brewing in its belly. And we only had five minutes to beat her before she incinerated us!"

Fujin was the first to reach them.

"LEAVING!"

"Okay. I just gotta--"

"NOW!"

"That's cool. It's just that I've got this--"

"Come on, Chicken Wuss. We don't got all day here," Seifer said. "Say goodbye to your girlfriend so we can go."

Zell grew crimson. He jabbed the copy button on the machine hard once the librarian closed the paper drawer and motioned over his shoulder. "Hewas onher side."

The librarian gave Seifer, and then the drink in his hand, a scathing look and said, "Oh. I see." Her lips flattened into a straight, tight line. "If you'll just wait outside, Sir, then Mr. Dincht will be with you as soon as he is finished here."

Through some small miracle, Seifer held his temper. They waited for Zell out by the fountain and finished their drinks. Quistis's tasted extra sweet as the only nice thing Seifer had ever done for her. She consented to sit next to him with that in mind. Someone who'd been loved as a child, she thought, wouldn't have found such a simple thing so extraordinary. But she licked the cream off the top of her cup with a delicate, savoring tongue. It felt warm and familiar against her lips.

0 0 0

Headmaster Cid walked into Squall's office with his hands behind his back. This was his usual position of supplication, a sort of non-verbal assertion that he came unarmed and undefended. In a facility filled with armed and dangerous adolescents, he'd had plenty of time to perfect this illusion of innocence, but Squall recognized it from the outset as the most dangerous stance the Headmaster could take against him. He prepared himself for the worst.

"Good morning, Squall. How are you today?"

"Fine, Sir."

Cid shuffled up to the chairs on the other side of Squall's desk but didn't sit down.

"And how has Rinoa been? I haven't seen her in a while, which is unusual for her."

"She's fine, too."

Squall leaned back in his chair to get further away from the headmaster and felt the feathery ruff of his coat tickle his arms. He felt vulnerable sitting in just his t-shirt and considered pulling the jacket on, but he didn't want to move and spook the headmaster onto topic.

Cid shifted forward. "I was just up on the bridge talking with Xu and Nida."

"Is everything alright, Sir?"

"Oh, yes. Nothing you need to worry about, Squall. Weather is clear and Garden is running smoothly," he said reassuringly, so much so that Squall actually felt a measure of comfort from the pitch of Cid's voice. "It's just that I was looking out the windows at the Galbadian desert, and it made me curious..."

Cid paused and acted like the question had grown organically from his unrenowned sense of wonder.

"Where are we heading? I don't think Garden has been this way in a long time."

"I already gave Nida our heading," Squall replied. "He should have told you. Centra."

"Do we have a mission there?"

"Yes."

"Oh...we do?" Now Cid seemed genuinely curious. "What does it involve? It's nothing about Edea, is it?"

"No. Edea is fine, as far as I know." Squall rolled back his chair a little further toward the window. "It's just a quick errand. Rinoa and I will be taking care of it."

"Then is the whole Garden really necessary?" Cid's arms tightened behind his back. "I think you can understand, our presence in Galbadian water is making everyone a little uneasy following that attack by--" Cid couldn't say it. He knew the truth.

"I don't think Galbadia will bother us any further."

Cid sighed. "You haven't heard then."

"Heard what?"

"The president of Galbadia, Jack Krier, went on Galbadian television and declared war against Esthar and Balamb Garden." Squall was caught off guard by Cid's news and hardly heard what he said next. "He cited some attack on a Galbadian army base that was led by Balamb Garden SeeDs using an Esthar air ship. Of course, we had nothing to do with it. But considering the circumstances...it's possible that Quistis and Zell may have."

"You think they're framing us?"

Cid shrugged. "I think we should go back to Balamb. Whatever this errand is, surely it can wait. If we keep sailing around Galbadia like this, we're going to attract some very unwelcome attention."

Squall shook his head. "No. We can't go back to Balamb. We're halfway around Galbadia already."

"It will look less like we're advancing if we're heading toward home."

"No."

Cid's patience stretched but did not snap. "Then tell me, what is in Centra that is so important? If anything has happened to Edea and you're afraid to tell me..."

"It's not Edea."

"Then what is it?"

Squall found he literally couldn't say. No words came to him to describe the urgent desire he felt to get Rinoa onto Centran soil, to see her resting peacefully in the flower field where he could protect her. He had nothing sensical to say to the headmaster. So he looked up at the older man and slowly shook his head. It was all he could do.

"I know whatever it is must seem very important to you, Squall," Cid said. "But we need to turn Garden around. The Galbadians have declared war on us. They will attack us again. We need to go back to Balamb and go into negotiations to explain to them that they were not attacked by Garden sanctioned SeeDs."

"I will not order Garden to turn around," Squall said firmly and got up from his chair. The headmaster didn't understand how imperative this mission was.

"I'm not asking you to anymore, Squall," Cid replied.

"You're ordering me?"

"No. I'm the headmaster. I will order the change in course. I can't risk everyone in Garden."

Cid turned around, his hands no longer behind his back but strong and capable at his sides, and Squall felt the firm grip of panic take hold of his heart. He'd talked to Xu, and Squall already knew that she was planning to betray Garden. Quistis and Zell had boarded specifically to capture or kill Rinoa and now they all had the headmaster convinced to sway him from the course to safety. Was an ambush waiting behind them, back near Dollet? Quistis and Zell had to know that Krier's declaration of war would force them to change course to avoid Galbadian territory.

Suddenly, he was sure.

"Sir!" He readied a spell in his head.

Cid turned around.

"I can't let you betray us, too, Sir."

0 0 0

The pub was empty except for the bartender and a young girl who was dusting tables. The bartender immediately recognized both Quistis and Seifer as soon as they walked in.

"Getting a head start today?" he asked.

"Actually, we're here to talk to the owner. Is he here?" Quistis replied.

"This is a pub. Not an office."

Seifer walked right up to the bar and leaned against it. "We're aware of that. So is he here, or not?"

"You can tell him it's Quistis Trepe, if that will make you feel better about it," Quistis added. "He might remember me."

The bartender arched an eyebrow and laughed. "Yeah. I bet he might. Hold on."

As the bartender climbed the stairs at the back of the pub, Seifer rounded on Quistis. "What's that mean? Why would he remember you?"

She settled on a half-truth. "I beat him at cards."

Seifer crossed his arms and gave her a hard, distrusting glare, though her relationship with the pub owner was hardly any of his business. Two minutes later, the man in question appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Miss Trepe! Glad to see you back in Dollet!" He dropped down them fast enough to betray his delight, but lost the spring in his step when he noticed her entourage. Seifer and Fujin in particular seemed to give him pause. "Are these your...?"

"Seifer, Fujin, and Zell," she said by way of introduction. "My team mates. We'd like to talk to you for a few minutes."

"Right." He smiled amicably. "Well...come on up to my office."

Once they were all settled into chairs across his desk, Quistis decided to come right out with what they wanted. All the magazine and newspaper clippings laying scattered on the floor and tacked to corkboard walls made her feel guilty and suspicious that someone might figure out why she'd been looking at articles concerning the pub owner in the first place. She didn't want to have to explain her interest in the man and his wife.

"We need to get into the catacombs," she said.

"That's illegal."

"I know."

Fujin leaned forward in her chair and nudged a newspaper to the side with her foot. Quistis saw her eye narrow and dart across the page.

"What makes you think I can help you?" the pub owner asked.

"Your cellar," Quistis replied slowly, preoccupied with Fujin's shifting attention. "We heard that when you were expanding it, you broke into one of the crypts."

"It was sealed back up. I wouldn't just leave a grave hanging open into my bar."

Out of the corner of her eye, Quistis saw Fujin turn and look at her, then back down at the stack of papers. She prayed that the top article wasn't the one of Helene with the baby. Fancifully, her mind added, the picture of you.

"Did they seal it up with stone?" she managed to ask.

He leaned back in his chair until it creaked and crossed his arms. His eyes moved quickly across the four of them and settled back on Quistis where he saw someone familiar -- someone he loved.

"Is it important?"

"Vitally."

"And you're prepared? People used to get lost down there all the time."

"We've been in worse places."

At this, his eyes flicked to Seifer and back, but he nodded and stood up.

"We had to scale back our plans for the cellar once the workers broke into the crypt below the pub," he explained and fetched a large key out of his desk drawer. "We had to reverse direction and build the other way. The hole wasn't very big, so they boarded it up. You should be able to break through the wood, but it's a good drop to the floor once you're through." He paused on his way out the door and turned around again. "Do you have food? Water? Extra batteries for your flashlights?"

"We're ready," Zell said. "We're working with a professor. He told us everything we'd need."

"Yeah, well...if I'm going to let you into my cellar, you're going to take along some extra provisions. Can't be too safe."

He shouted orders to the bartender and the cleaning girl as he charged down the stairs and scattered them like mice into the kitchen before leading them down to the cellar door which was illuminated by a single, bare light bulb with a shoestring tied to the switch. The room was cool and packed with crates of alcohol stacked along the far wall. Closer to the door were shelves lined with a motley assortment of jars and cans. They had to step around cardboard boxes of dry food (mostly crackers, nuts, and pretzels) to get into the room, and then waited for the pub owner to get his bearings.

"I think...let's see..." He spun around once. "We were going to built it this way, toward the back of the pub, and that's where we hit the crypt."

Seifer and Zell helped him move boxes aside to reveal an old, wooden wall.

"The hole was small, like I said. We stopped as soon as we broke through. And I think it was about..." He paced the length of the wall. "God, it's been so long. I think it was right about...here maybe?"

Fujin and Quistis waited in the hallway while Seifer and Zell pulled boards out of the wall under the pub owner's instruction. The screeching of nails being wrested from their long rest in the wooden studs could easily have been the cry of ghosts beneath their feet, roaming the ancient labyrinth, hungry for the life raging above. Only ten minutes passed before Zell called Quistis in to look at the gaping, ragged hole in the building's foundation they had uncovered. The cool scent of rock and water drifted up through it like a soft gasp from the earth.

Newly armed with extra rations from the pub's stores, they crowded around the opening.

"You're the leader," Seifer finally said and put his hand at the small of Quistis's back. "You go first."

"Alright."

She went through feet first, holding onto Zell's hands as he lowered her down until her feet hit the floor. Her first, immediate impression was of suffocating darkness. It was thick and oppressive, impenetrable to the weak light drifting in through the star-like opening above her. She fumbled for her flashlight, shivering either from an unexpected rush of anxiety fueled by the aggressive blackness, or from the damp underground chill that was already sucking warmth from her core. It all felt unpleasantly like the dead grasping feebly at her soul.

Her finger slid across the switch on her flashlight just as Fujin was lowered down beside her.

The light revealed a narrow tunnel that stretched both forward and behind them. Across the wall, the construction workers had written their names in crayon and in chalk.

"Hands off, Chicken Wuss!" Seifer yelled above them before he tumbled awkwardly through the hole. Zell came through more nimbly afterwards and stuck his landing like a cat.

"So," Zell drawled slowly and looked about. "This is it."

Dollet's city of the dead -- empty, quiet, and cold. Quistis had somehow expected it to be something more. With no direction seemingly better than any other, she let fate take hold of her hand once more and started off in the direction she had landed. Blind luck hadn't led her astray so far, she was willing to trust it a little longer.

The tunnel tilted down but otherwise remained the same.

"Not really what I'd imagined..." Seifer muttered.

"BORING," Fujin agreed.

As they traveled down, the tunnel floor began to flood with milky water. First it lingered in pools and then it rose to create a uniform channel that grew deeper until they could barely straddle it. After arbitrarily turning right at the first intersection, the ceiling dropped and moving forward became a balancing act of watching the uneven floor as well as the patchy, bare rock overhead. Seifer had the most trouble with this and cracked his skull on a rough outcropping of stone. A small, vivid trickle of blood dribbled down his cheek from his temple, but he rubbed it away with his hand and motioned for Quistis to continue. The bloody smudge he left on the wall in passing felt like a sacrifice, and moments later they emerged from their tunnel into a wide gallery of burial spaces.

Notches were carved five on top of one another into the walls. Most were empty crevices, the edges worn away by the years. But a few still contained bones. A broken set of teeth peeked out of the corner of one; the knotty end of a femur protruded from another. Others were still sealed shut with stone slabs glued into place with mortar that still looked damp, rough with ancient tool marks.

"Wow," Zell whispered. "Look at how many bodies they fit in here. Imagine how this place must have smelled back then."

Presently, only a faint musty scent lingered in the air. The dead here had long since turned to rock and dust.

"I don't see any writing," Seifer said. He walked over to one of the burial notches and pushed the bones aside. "Nothing buried with them either."

"Well, yeah," Zell replied. "These people were poor. Look at 'em. They're buried on top of each other in a bunch of cubbies. They probably didn't have anything to be buried with. They probably couldn't even read."

"I thought the professor said there were paintings down here."

"He also said this was used to bury plague victims. There isn't a lot of time to build fancy tombs when people are kickin' the bucket left and right."

Seifer sighed and rubbed the tender spot on the side of his head. "No use looking for old books among a bunch of poor, illiterate skeletons, I guess."

He found the exit to the gallery and turned into a new passageway without waiting to see who would follow, though Fujin was hot on his heels. The darkness consumed the ambient light from his flashlight immediately. The catacombs were eating their traces as they walked, trespassers in a world not designed for light and movement. Quistis and Zell had to run to catch up lest the group become permanently separated.

The pace was slower with Seifer in the lead. He took them through more tall rooms packed with bones and around deep impressions in the floor that plunged straight into the pit of the earth. Quistis stopped to shine her flashlight down one but couldn't see the bottom. Dr. Shipey probably could have explained them away as ventilation shafts, but to her they looked ominously like traps for the unwary interloper.

"How many fucking people can one plague kill?" Seifer demanded as they walked into another gallery of niches. "There aren't even this many people in Dollet."

"Maybe not now, but Dollet used to be an entire kingdom," Zell reminded him.

"Doesn't change the fact that this isn't what we're looking for."

Quistis checked each of the slots just to be sure that nothing had been tucked away with the bodies. One grave close to the floor looked particularly promising. She crouched to get a better look and her flashlight glinted off the curve of a blade still clutched in the skeleton's hand. The body was wrapped in a whispery fine patch of red linen that was unraveling around the edges. She was reaching for the sword and was about to call Zell over to take a look at what she'd found when the bones shuddered of their own accord, rattling against one another, and the finger bones tightened around the hilt of the sword. Between the joints, Quistis spotted snotty green sinews pulling tight, bringing the skeleton back together.

As she ducked and rolled away from the undead monster, she felt its sword swing past her ear.

"Watch out!" Zell yelled from somewhere, half a second too late.

The forbidden fell from the niche in a waterfall of bones, then coalesced on the floor again until it was standing upright, ancient red cape flying from its shoulders.

Quistis scrambled to her feet and put as much distance between herself and the monster as possible. The undead were easy to defeat but extremely dangerous to encounter unaware -- forbiddens could kill with a single blow.

"Fireaga!" Seifer's spell set fire to the monsters otherworldly cape and set its stringy muscles bubbling. It hissed and shook.

"Use phoenix down," Zell yelled as Quistis was joining their line.

"I don't have any, Chicken Wuss!"

"What? Who doesn't carry phoenix down?"

Fujin reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of fiery feathers. The forbidden jolted when he saw them and advanced quickly on her, sword drawn, bones rattling. Seifer parried his death blow and Fujin blew the magical feathers into the skeleton's blank face. They melted and fused to the skull, creating a hot, white liquid that suffused the creature with vibrant, unbearable life. In a second, its tendons rotted to dust, and the bones collapsed harmlessly on the floor, sword clattering from its broken hand, and the red cape burned away with the lingering scent of blood.

"You okay?" Zell asked, taking hold of Quistis's arm.

"Fine. He missed me."

"Lucky thing, too," Seifer said and kicked the skull across the room. "You were right in its face when this thing woke up. It's amazing he didn't manage to run you right through."

Quistis massaged her heart. "I think we'll have to be more careful around the bodies from now on."

"Agreed," everyone said in unison.

They explored as far as they could through the blank tunnels without seeing any other undead monsters before they came to a dead end where the rough silhouette of a man on a horse was dashed across the wall in broad strokes of white paint, one arm outstretched like the point on a compass. The painting was rushed and sloppy, the work of an artist operating under the worst conditions. Or maybe it was a splash of graffiti. Without having something to compare it to, Quistis couldn't tell.

On the right wall, someone had drilled out a passage way big enough for a man to squeeze through. Zell took one look at it and dove in head first. His feet kicked for five long minutes as he wriggled through on his belly to the other side.

"It's safe!" he called back once he was finally through.

Fujin climbed in next, leaving Seifer and Quistis alone for a few dark, lonely minutes as she scraped along by her fingernails to the other side.

Seifer leaned back against the white figure, irreverent to the fact that he was in a sacred place, and pointed his flashlight right in Quistis's face.

"So, what's the deal with the pub owner?" he asked. "He was awful eager to help you out."

She held up a hand to shade her eyes. "I've met him before. I beat him at Triple Triad."

"So you said. Is everyone you beat at cards such a fan?" He made a small T-shape across his chest with his index finger. "I always fucking hated the Trepies."

"He's not a Trepie."

He's my...

Quistis forced her thoughts off the dangerous track they were heading down. Just because his once-upon-a-time wife looked like her, and just because they'd mysteriously lost a daughter, didn't mean the little girl was her. That didn't make him her father.

"Yeah, and Zell isn't a..." He drifted off, apparently unable to think of anything to say. Zell was fertile ground for insults. She was surprised that he was finally beginning to exhaust his repartee.

"Sometimes people just do nice things for one another, Seifer," she said.

"If they want something they do."

"So you want something from me in exchange for the drink you bought me at the library?"

He smiled. "Of course I do."

She couldn't help playing the game for just a second. "Want me to try and kill you again?" she asked.

He blushed and ducked to look through the hole and check on Fujin's progress. She was surprised just how uneasy the question made him. Maybe, she realized, he didn't want to be alone with her either.

Once Fujin called back that she was through, they both scrambled to be the first one in. His large, heavy body jostled against hers and his hand clamped around her wrist, his fingers pressing into the tender throbbing of her pulse. He was all heat and fire. Touching him was so different from the frigid shadow surrounding them and the unforgiving limestone against her shoulder. He was a raging flame of life. And he was easily pushing her aside to leave her behind in the lonely, deadly darkness.

"Wait!" She panicked and grabbed him by his belt loops to haul him back.

He came back, not entirely of his own will. "Hey! Knock it off!"

"I want to go first."

"Why?"

"Because..."

Because I don't want to be left behind. Because I don't want to be alone. Because I'm scared.

"Because I'm the leader."

Blood was still dribbling slowly from the cut near his temple, giving him a feral look. One black drop blazed a path down his cheek and dripped into the water between them, sending a crimson spiral through the mud. She felt bizarrely compelled to run a finger along his jaw and collect the life gathering there, but he dashed it away again, using the sleeve of his sweater. With his other hand, he gave in, motioning for her to go ahead of him. No argument. No questions. He stepped away from the tunnel and, for a moment, let her desires rule. For someone like Seifer Almasy, it looked suspiciously like a moment of unguarded affection.

"Thanks..."

"Just go, or I'll change my mind."

The connecting tunnel was rough and cramped. Quistis was immediately aware of several dozen feet of solid rock above her head. It pressed against her back and her bottom as she struggled through, inch by agonizing inch. Zell grabbed her hands when they came out the other side and pulled her the rest of the way. She flopped out onto the ground like a wet calf.

The new section of catacombs she found herself in was different from the one they had come from with its labyrinthine, barren passageways. Here the walls were raw patches of stone worn waxy by erosion. A pair of huge, metal pillars split the room, each five feet thick. They looked industrial rather than ceremonial, perhaps anchoring a building high above to the bedrock below. Dirt was piled in high clumps without any regard for aesthetics or basic navigation.

Behind her, Seifer was struggling to squeeze his wide shoulders through.

At length, his fingers and then his blonde hair peeked out. He grunted and groaned and came through in short bursts as if the ground were squeezing him out in convulsions, rather like giving birth or (she unkindly thought) passing excrement.

With Seifer safely through, they continued down the natural cave until it led back into the catacombs via a two foot high gap that they had to crawl through. They emerged on the other side from the back wall of an empty grave slot. Although the bones had disintegrated centuries ago, a sand-like dust coated the rock and pressed into Quistis's palms as she crawled. She quickly forgot about the human ash covering her when she swept her flashlight through the room.

The ceiling was vaulted and moved up in steps like a pyramid. On each of the room's three walls was a burial slot with a half circle carved above it that was filled with painted reliefs. Crenellated pillars that once must have looked very elegant stood in each corner. They were topped with pulsing waves of rock that spread across the walls until they faded against the shores of the burial places. In spots where the mortar had begun to wear away, trinkets that had been included in the mix were working their way free. One end of a delicate, golden necklace was hanging above one of the graves, untouched since it had been laid to rest with its master centuries ago.

Seifer walked up to the bit of jewelry and pulled on it, unzipping the mortar for four inches before the necklace broke free.

"Seifer!"

"What?"

She couldn't explain exactly why his lack of respect for the dead bothered her. In her line of work, death was a fact of life. Monsters were utterly disposable -- Garden had to refill the training center with them at least once every month. SeeDs died on missions all the time and cadets occasionally died in training or during field exams. Death happened. And no one thought much about it. Perhaps that was the reason why Seifer's blithe irreverence shocked her now, in a place where the dead had been shown such exquisite care and affection. Violating their carefully crafted afterlife seemed a grievous insult.

"This must be the five star catacomb," Seifer said. "You get the king size burial cubby and a brand new necklace under your pillow. That's pretty good turndown service. There must be some writing around here somewhere. These people could read. Right, Chicken Wuss?"

"Probably."

Paintings took up most of the real estate on the wall. They were scenes from everyday life: men sitting in conversation, working in fields, and pouring libations from huge casks of wine. The only writing was a few names scratched into the mortar.

A set of stone steps took them deeper. They spiraled down into the earth, and the air became cooler. Water again rose to cover the floor of the catacomb until they were wading through it ankle deep. But the lower they got, the more elaborate the tomb became until finally, they emerged into a huge gallery with one lone burial spot. It was still partially sealed, though a large chunk near the skeleton's feet had fallen off into the water. Worn paintings covered the tomb from top to bottom in a thick fresco that was broken up only by the line of the water and by passages of ancient Centran text spelled out in black calligraphy.

Zell whistled. "Jackpot! This must be what the professor was talking about."

Fujin took pictures. Zell managed to sneak into a few of them, grinning like a fool with his thumb stuck in the air, which earned him an angry shout and a slap that just barely missed his head.

Meanwhile, Seifer stuck his flashlight in the burial space to get a look at the body.

"Hey. This guy's got something with him," he called out. "Not a sword, thankfully. Looks like a tablet or something, up by his head."

He moved to pull away more of the seal, and Quistis found herself reaching out to grab hold of his wrist. Her fingertips grazed the back of his hand as he jerked out of reach.

"What's your problem?" he demanded. "This isn't a museum, Quistis. The whole look but don't touch thing is getting ridiculous."

She stared at him. Fujin and Zell did, too.

"It's not the touching that bothers me," she replied quietly. "It's the breaking."

He scoffed at her. "Who'll give a shit if the world comes to an end? No one will care what happens right now, as long as things come out okay in the end. Results. Not process."

All's well that ends well.

He broke away the seal and it crumbled to dust in his hands, revealing the dead man resting in the cool, damp darkness. A heavy tablet was tucked beneath his chin and had settled between his rib bones where his heart might once have been. Fujin photographed it and Seifer swept aside the dust -- rock dust, bone dust, a millennia's worth of human decay.

"Great. We found it. Now let's get the hell out of here," Seifer said as he wiped his hands off on his pants.

The only direction to travel from the elaborate tomb was up. So they climbed stairs and attempted to retrace their steps. But Quistis realized they must have missed the burial slot they'd climbed out in when they got to another set of tunnels. These weren't flooded, but they were rife with graffiti and old liter: glass soda bottles, cigarette buts, and tinfoil wrappers. Somehow, these artifacts of the recent past seemed more ominous than all the bones in the lower crypts. With the rare exception of a forbidden coming awake, the dead tended to be much more harmless than their living counterparts.

"I hope we got something good for Dr. Shipey," Zell was saying. "I've been working with him a little bit, and he's been teaching me a little Ancient Centran. I can't read it or anything. He's just teaching me the letters. But still, it's awesome just to be able to recognize it. Being down there and seeing that tablet...knowing what it is. Man! I see why he does this for a living."

"He doesn't explore tombs for a living, dip-shit," Seifer replied. "He works at a university. He reads books and writes papers. He doesn't go out and have adventures, or whatever it is that you're thinking. It's men of action, men like me, who actually go out and do things."

"It is so not an insult to say that Dr. Shipey isn't a man like you. It's a compliment."

Fujin glared at Zell on Seifer's behalf, and they started aimlessly up another set of stairs, working on the idea that going up would eventually lead them out. At the top of the stairs, where the air was slightly warmer, they stopped to eat.

In the silence of their frantic chewing, an odd sound tickled at the edge of Quistis's senses. It fluttered in and out of existence like the ghost of a half-forgotten memory. Bahamut shifted in her head and she felt him pushing against the inside of her ears, extending her senses out further until they sharpened, clear as a razor blade slicing through the fog of ambient noise. And finally, she could single the phantom out -- two voices. They were moving somewhere, beyond the walls or around a bend, wandering like spirits.

Bahamut collapsed back into her subconscious, and she lost the sound amongst the aural thicket of Zell's chewing.

"I feel like a freaking bat in here," he said, then squinted his eyes in faux blindness. "It's cool and all, but I hope this is the last tomb for a while. All the dead people...it sorta starts to get to you."

When they got moving again, Quistis took the lead. Though she strained for any errant drop of water or tumbling of pebbles, the catacombs were all silence and darkness again. Nothing lurked in the unknown except Bahamut watching her from the ether of thought and possibility.

"So, what do you think President Krier is going to do?" Zell asked no one in particular. "Think he'll try to attack Garden again?"

"He can't do much without the weapon," Quistis replied, and hoped that would be the end of it. The schizophrenic scribbles on the walls and Seifer's searing presence hard at her back were making her uneasy. She wanted silence and space. But Zell was oblivious to the changing atmosphere and pressed on.

"Esthar would crush Galbadia in all out war. Krier's gotta know that, right? So he can't attack them directly, and I don't think Laguna will do anything unprovoked, so...what do you think? He's not going to do anything?"

"Zell..."

"Cuz if they come here to Dollet after us, someone would have to respond to that. So I was just thinking that maybe--"

"QUIET!" Fujin yelled, shattering the silence she meant to create.

Quistis fell back against the wall, images of an army of undead soldiers rising up from the crypts flooding her mind. Where there was one forbidden, there were bound to be more. They spread like a disease, drawn to darkness and decay. All four of them stood still as the sound of Fujin's voice echoed down the tunnels and dissipated. Flashlights pointed down at the floor, they crowded together in silence.

Just when Quistis was preparing to let loose the breath she was holding, the phantom voices returned on the horizon of her senses. She turned to Seifer to see if he could hear them as well. He nodded slowly when he noticed her looking up at him. She pressed her finger to her lips and then turned down the brightness on her flashlight. Zell tightened his gloves on his fists and Fujin's pinwheel was clutched tight in her free hand.

Up another set of narrow stairs, the litter multiplied ten fold. Empty candy wrappers were strewn in amongst the small heaps of broken bones that had been cleared from the burial notches to make room for the locked, metal safe boxes that were sitting in them now. Hardly a nest of undead monsters, this was something else. Quistis unrolled Save the Queen from her belt and crept up to the next corner.

The voices were clearer here. More human.

"I told you how much to bring."

"I know. I told you I'd have it by next week, but I really need some now." The second was a woman's voice, pleading. "Can't you just cut me a break, huh? I've always been good for it."

The man she was talking to held his position. "This ain't a charity, sweetheart."

Seifer came up behind Quistis and whispered in her ear, "Sounds shady. Let's take them out."

"Let's wait," she replied. "We don't want the Galbadians to find out we've been down here after they invade."

"What's it matter? They can't read the tablets anyway."

"Shut up, Seifer," Zell hissed. "Quisty's the leader. Just do what she says."

They hugged the wall, their flashlights off and waited for the couple to leave. But the deal was quickly deteriorating.

"I can't go another day," the woman announced. "I'll just take what I can get with what I have."

"It isn't much."

"How much?"

He sighed. "A couple grams. Maybe one hit."

"That's not enough."

So this was Dollet's underground in more ways than one, Quistis realized. As an out of the way place frequented only by those who had a certain disregard for the law, it was probably a safe place for Dollet's seedier residents to make a living in.

"We could take an exchange," a new voice said, another man.

The woman hesitated to reply, but not for the reason Quistis imagined. "How much would that get me?"

He rattled off an amount that meant nothing to Quistis, but seemed to interest the woman, who consented to the trade. A few long, silent minutes passed by before Quistis figured out exactly what that meant.

Seifer swore and pushed himself up off the floor.

"That's enough," he grumbled and walked around the corner before Quistis could stop him.

Despite her better judgment, she followed him, and caught a glimpse of pale limbs before he swung Hyperion through the air.

"Break it up!" he shouted and took a swing at the closest man. The woman screamed and scrambled away as Seifer nailed the man with a break spell, freezing him hard as stone in all his rotten glory. The second man pulled a gun out of nowhere and fired at Seifer. He missed and the bullet broke a sizable chip off the wall. Quistis cast a thunder spell on him that knocked the weapon from his hands and sent him sprawling, spitty and steaming on the floor.

Seifer leveled his blade at the woman.

"You should know," he said slowly, "that there are undead monsters in here."

They left her there, half naked and shaking with terror. It was completely unnecessary violence. But, Quistis reflected as they finally came up out of the catacombs, it was preferable to witnessing life's nearly dead mingling unnaturally with the long past.

The tunnel they followed led out into the fields above Dollet near the train station. The day was nearly spent, but even the weak light of the sinking sun was blinding after hours in the catacombs. They stopped to eat again before starting back for the city, and Quistis took the opportunity to visit a thundaga draw point she new existed just up the hill. She felt out the ground with her hand until she located the deep source of energy pulsing in the ground. But when she bent to touch it and draw from it, the energy shrank away.

"What're you doing?" Seifer asked. In the light now, she could tell that he was covered in blood and bone dust. An unholy combination that, strangely enough, worked for him.

"There's a draw point here," she explained. "But it's empty."

"Guess someone beat you to it."

"Who?"

He shrugged and gave her a strange, long look before reaching out to brush some of the dirt off her face. She went stiff.

"What are you doing?"

He jerked his hand away. "Nothing." Then he grew defensive. "God, you're touchy. You know that? And self-centered. Not everyone is a fan, you know. I'm not like that pub owner, ready to do anything and everything just because you're Quistis Trepe."

He walked the rest of the way back to town with his chin so high in the air that Quistis could see the small, red marks Save the Queen had left around his neck.