A/N: This chapter is dedicated to the students I had the privilege to work with this past year. Truly an amazing group of kids who taught me to love my craft again, and astounded me with their brilliance. I wish them all luck next year, and to the few who I suspect might be members of other fandoms—happy writing ;)
Sorry again about the delay. As…aforementioned, I was teaching…and returning to the job market. Life has been full.
And please excuse the copious amount of liberties taken with this whole chapter. There may be names, events, and sequencing that seem off…as well as certain…depictions. But more on that at the end… ;)
(also apologies if you encounter any "raw" text…I REALLY hope I edited most of the snarly bits out, but I may have missed some)
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Domo Arigatou Mr Roboto…
(Into the Giant)
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Arise, Dragon Tamer, arise.
The field is set, the battle awaits.
Our brethren scream, for this madman's scheme.
Arise, Dragon Tamer, arise.
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Rydia opened heavy eyes, feeling as though she still heard the refrain of a song. A dream, perhaps. She had the uncomfortable realization that time had moved on without her when she saw Cecil sitting across a familiar tiled aisle from her. The lights of the Lunar Whale flickered and gleamed around them, and she glanced to either side, realizing she was leaning against the shell of one of the ship's pods.
Cecil was leaning against a similar pod with his arms folded. His armor was absent, and his tangled platinum hair fell in hanks on either side of his face. He appeared frustrated, and he was gazing at Rydia with a furrow deeply etched in his brow.
"Again?" Rydia asked.
Cecil's first expression dissolved slightly; replaced by a smirk. "Again," he said.
She blinked, trying to remember the events following the duel with Bahamut. "The flames…" she murmured.
"Yes," he agreed. "FuSoYa has explained a bit about them."
"I didn't—fail, did I?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No, but FuSoYa was amazed," he trailed off, his lips arching downward into a frown. "He said he'd never seen a spell quite like the one you cast."
"But I—" Rydia mused, her mind suddenly abuzz with the revelation of the spell she had cast in the end. "I used the words he taught me," she objected, looking at him directly.
Cecil gave her a shrewd look in return. "He didn't seem to think so."
Rydia opened her mouth to speak, but then thought better of it. It was too difficult to explain the truth.
"What was that spell, Rydia?" Cecil asked.
"I'm not sure," she answered, feeling a name bubble to the front of her thoughts regardless. She hadn't known it at the time, but she recognized it now—the fiery furnace, the flame of the world's core—Flare.
"I'm worried that this new power you've found," Cecil began, carefully choosing his words. "Is more harm to you than good. You weren't yourself."
Rydia raised her hands in front of her, turning them over, and seeing they were her own, undamaged. "I don't remember much after the battle," she reflected.
"Is this the only way for you to cast magic?" he asked. "To use their spells?"
"Better to have magic than not," she replied, flicking a wary glance in his direction.
"The Lunar Crystals seem dangerous," he went on. "This magic seems to consume you entirely, not unlike a spell an old Sage once cast. You know how his story ended."
Rydia felt suddenly uneasy. "My casting is not fueled by revenge," she pointed out. "I am not consumed by my magic."
"How do you explain your state, then?" he asked curiously. "How do you explain your collapse?"
"I'm unused to the tax of these incantations," she replied, making up excuses as she went. "They require more energy and concentration than before."
Cecil gazed back at her, taking her measure. Rydia wondered if it wasn't only concern that he felt, but fear. Was he afraid of her? Were the others afraid of her? She and Edge had shared a similar conversation not too long ago…
"Whatever power you've found, Rydia, please be careful," he told her.
"Aren't I always?" she asked with a fleeting smile, taking a page from Edge's book while she was at it.
"How do you feel?" Cecil asked after a moment.
She grinned sheepishly when her rumbling stomach betrayed her. "Hungry."
Cecil finally stood up, beckoning for her hand to pull her to her feet. "The others are waiting."
When the two of them crossed through the doorway and into the main cabin of the Lunar Whale, Rosa and Edge were sitting on the stairs leading up to the bridge. Their packs were beside them, along with what was left of their food.
Rosa stood when she saw the two of them, and hopped down the stairs to wrap Rydia in a firm embrace.
"It took you longer to wake than we expected. Even after you were brought out of the pod," the white mage fussed over her.
"I was tired," Rydia announced, extricating herself from Rosa's grip.
"You're lucky you aren't dead," Edge remarked, barely looking at her.
Rydia frowned in his direction and glanced up at FuSoYa who was controlling the ship. He caught her eye.
"You've decided to join us, Dragon Tamer," FuSoYa announced.
Rydia gave him a quizzical look at the use of this new title. "Dragon Tamer," she said, unconsciously combing her fingers through the frayed ends of her hair. "That's what they called me…."
FuSoYa raised both brows, and she sensed the others' eyes on her. "'They'?" the Lunarian asked.
"Yes, 'they'?" Edge seconded.
Rydia realized the number of reasons for her friends to suspect her sanity had just increased. "I—" she fumbled for words. "—that's what the crystals called me."
Her words were met with silence.
"The crystals do not speak," FuSoYa pronounced.
Rydia glanced at him, knowing this to be untrue. They had spoken to her through their own words, supplanting her previous incantations with their own. The Lunar Crystals were sentient in a way the Earth Crystals were not. How could he not know this?
"Your inexperience is mistaking fantasy for reality," FuSoYa said. "The Crystals are merely a source of energy from which 'spells' and other such 'magic's' spring."
Rydia frowned, wrestling with this idea, but wondered if it was worth refuting.
"You have won the Great Dragon's support, but do not lose yourself to delusion."
Rydia clenched her jaw, annoyed at the Lunarian's egotism.
"Where do we go from here?" she asked Cecil instead.
"To your planet," FuSoYa replied on his nephew's behalf, deftly accelerating the ship's functions.
"FuSoYa was explaining that the alignment between the moon and the earth is almost complete," Rosa said, tip-toeing around the conversation's earlier tension with this latest news.
Rydia looked again at Cecil, whose face was grim. "We're already en route, aren't we?" she realized.
He nodded. "We couldn't waste any time. The hours that we've been in flight, you've been in the pod, healing."
"That's what it does—the pod?" she asked, surprised.
FuSoYa made a grumbling sound in his throat. "It was designed to regulate the internal conditions of the body—to induce sleep, so that travel over long distances could be managed with minimal degradation."
"What does it do to the mind?" Rydia wondered, turning toward him.
"It stores your consciousness, allows a certain…dream-state, if you will."
This information piqued her curiosity, but FuSoYa was not in a story telling mood.
"No matter," FuSoYa said. "Your body has been repaired, and your strength is returned. We have Bahamut's blessing, and now we have a battle to engage."
Rydia quickly grabbed a piece of bread out of Rosa's pack and nibbled on it before the nausea of what they were about to do stole her appetite.
She glimpsed through the ship's windows, at the earth growing larger in her vision, and saw the tower glowing brightly on its island. It was nothing but a smudge of light amid swirling clouds from this distance, but she felt her heart drop at the sight.
"I think you should have stayed in that pod," Edge muttered to her from a few feet away.
She glanced at him, ashamed to admit she thought the same.
0-0-0-0-0-0
Rydia had never experienced the Lunar Whale leaving the planet, and so was unprepared for its return. The turbulent event had her clutching railings and praying for the moment when the enormous contraption would finally cease moving.
"Why does this feel worse than I remember," Rosa lamented, holding onto Cecil with white knuckles.
"We're almost through the planet's atmosphere," FuSoYa informed them above the din of the engines and the rattling of the ship's external panels."
Clouds swept past the windows of the bridge, glowing with heat as the ship barreled through. The Lunar Whale finally coasted for a moment, only for FuSoYa to reverse its thrusters and slow them down, fighting gravity in a long, painful dive.
Rydia knew the moment they'd reached their destination, when the ship encountered interference from the tower. Sensors chimed and alarms went off, and the mysterious voice of the ship began alerting them to imminent concerns that neither Cecil nor FuSoYa felt any need to translate.
Through the portholes along the side of the ship, Rydia could see mountains. She released her death grip on the railing beside her and walked toward the smaller windows, noticing Edge had joined her. They both looked out to the north. The colors of the landscape were muted, as the tower emitted a light that pulsed at regular intervals, seemingly draining the life from the world around it.
"Why aren't we closer?" Edge demanded, turning around to glance at their pilot.
FuSoYa was frowning, poring over the ship's consoles and then looking out the windows.
"The sequence is in its final phase," he informed them. "To get any closer means we'll be in direct alignment with the matter stream."
"What?" Edge snapped, more annoyed than anyone else.
"The ship would be torn apart," FuSoYa elaborated.
"You're saying we're too late," Edge clarified.
Cecil stared at his uncle. "We're too late?" he asked.
Rosa gasped and Rydia's eyes were drawn back to the windows. A beam of light had fallen from the sky, piercing the clouds and searing the mountains of Eblan with its unearthly glow.
"What the hell is that?" Edge demanded, alarmed.
"The giant."
The four of them turned to look at the Lunarian, when a shockwave rocked the ship, sending them all sprawling across the tiled floor.
Rydia caught Rosa's elbow to her sternum and Cecil and Edge stumbled awkwardly into each other.
"We have to fall back!" FuSoYa shouted above the alarms, steering the ship away from the tower and its mountains.
"We have to get inside that tower!" Edge snarled, leaping to his feet.
"The tower is no longer a problem—the giant is!"
The farther they flew, the more apparent their situation became. Rydia saw a figure emerge out of the beam from the moon, a large humanoid shape plated in metal, and taller than any mountain she had ever seen.
It raised enormous mechanical arms and flames erupted from their palms, spreading in an arc that set the mountains on fire.
One jet of flame flew directly at the ship, and Rydia screamed as the Lunar Whale was sent off course, spiraling into a dive before FuSoYa corrected their descent and brought them closer to the ground.
"That thing—that is the giant?" Cecil balked.
"It's enormous!" Rosa seconded with a horrified expression.
"Dammit!" Edge swore, pounding a fist into the floor.
Rydia glanced in the prince's direction, realizing that this was the second time he was watching his kingdom burn. She unconsciously reached out, her fingers brushing his, but he was too busy staring at the destruction beyond the ship's windows to notice.
"We can't approach the tower with the giant barring our path," FuSoYa said gravely.
"How are we supposed to stop that machine?" Cecil demanded.
FuSoYa pursed his lips, his chin stuck out at a defiant angle. "We will have to—"
"What is that?" Rosa asked sharply, pointing to the east.
Numb with shock, Rydia's eyes drifted to the east. What could possibly be there that was more important than a plan to stop the Giant….?
"Airships!" Rydia cried out in disbelief, instantly forgiving Rosa the interruption.
"What can they hope to achieve against such a foe," FuSoYa remarked, eyeing the ships.
"It's Cid!" Cecil said excitedly. "They're firing on the Giant!"
All of them approached the windows, watching as the Giant was struck by a bombardment from the airship fleet and lurched to a stop, its torso twisting as it analyzed its new target.
"Is there any way to hail your ships?" FuSoYa asked.
Cecil was too stunned to answer, but FuSoYa proceeded without input, submitting commands on the ship's consoles until a hissing static sounded overhead.
"Cecil?" Cid's voice called out with a tinny, nasally sound. "I'm assuming it's you aboard that monstrous ship?"
There was silence for a minute until FuSoYa's voice replied. "This vessel is the Lunar Whale. Cecil and his companions are on board. To whom are we speaking?"
Cecil climbed the stairs to the bridge and intercepted the communication device from FuSoYa.
"Who else would you be speaking to—it's Cid!" the engineer brayed. "Are all of you alive?"
"We're alive, Cid," Cecil answered. "You've assembled the fleet?"
"We assembled what you asked for," Cid chuckled, and then swore over the line as a loud concussive sound crackled through the speaker.
Rydia, who was still watching events unfold outside of the windows, saw a jet of flame scorch its way in the direction of the airships like dragon fire. The fleet scattered and dove to avoid the blast, leaning at precarious angles until they righted themselves. Rydia's hands gripped the sill of the closest porthole, her heart pounding anxiously. A secondary blast—one that came from the opposite direction drew her eyes to the ground below. A lumbering formation of tanks was rolling steadily over the terrain.
"Cecil?" Yang's voice crackled overhead.
"Yang!" Cecil shouted back.
"I'm not sure how this device is supposed to…can you hear me?"
"We can hear you, Yang," Cecil assured him, sounding more baffled by the minute.
"The Dwarves are with me, as are the Sylves," Yang told them over the communication link.
Rydia was so startled, she barely heard the rest as Giott interrupted with a deep, throaty bellow.
"We fight for the earth!" the dwarf king announced. "For our home, and the mother of us all! Lali-ho!"
"Hey, don't forget about us!" a young spritely voice cried out over the static. It was a voice Rydia didn't recognize.
"Our elder lifted the spell on us!" a girl's voice chimed.
"The twins!" Cecil said in surprise.
"This is not your burden to bear alone," the Elder of Mysidia said more evenly. "This is a battle for all who live and breathe upon this planet!"
"Cecil, let me show you the courage you helped me find!" Edward's voice also added to the chorus.
Rydia's eyes were pricked with tears to hear the voices of their companions rallying together. They had all arrived in the world's time of need.
"They all came to fight," Cecil realized, absentmindedly holding the communication device as he stared at the battlefield in the distance.
"The Giant has staggered!" Rosa exclaimed hopefully.
"Then this is our chance," FuSoYa said, flying the Lunar Whale in the direction of the fleet. "We can get inside the accursed thing!
Edge gave the Lunarian a determined look. "So we can destroy whatever controls it from the inside?" he asked.
"Not from this vessel," FuSoYa informed him. "It's too large a target for the Giant's weapons. We would need to board one of those smaller airships to find a way to penetrate the Giant."
Cecil lifted the communication device to his mouth. "We're going to need your help, Cid!"
There was a crackle and hiss overhead. "What was that?" the cantankerous engineer asked back.
"Your help!" Cecil repeated.
"Aye, what can I do?"
FuSoYa grabbed the communication device. "We require your vessel."
"Cecil…" Cid said, sounding put-out.
"Please, Cid, we need to borrow your ship."
"Can you set down somewhere?" Cid asked.
"Yes. Meet us there."
FuSoYa flew as close as he dared to the Giant before altering the Lunar Whale's controls so that the ship began a steady vertical drop toward the ground. Once the ship had landed, he was away from the bridge and striding for the ship's exit. The rest of them followed, taking up their weapons and scant supplies.
On the ground, the smell of burning timber and scorched earth drifted down on the wind from the north, further churned up by the propellers from Cid's flagship as he set down nearby and hastily threw down the gangplank.
They ran aboard, not wanting to waste time, and found themselves in the midst of a frenzy of activity.
Engineers were running in every direction; loading ordinance and securing ropes, while Cid stood at the helm like a general directing troops.
FuSoYa headed in his direction, his blue robes swishing furiously around his feet.
"Take us to the Giant's mouth!" he ordered, much to Cid's bafflement.
Cid narrowed his eyes at the interloper and then looked at Cecil. "And who's this whitehair think he is, ordering me about on my own ship?" he demanded.
"His name is FuSoYa," Cecil explained, following a few steps behind his uncle. "He's from the moon."
"The moon," Cid repeated flatly, staring suspiciously at the Lunarian—at his costume, and also the exoticness of his features.
"We've no time," FuSoYa said briskly, pointing. "Can you get us near enough to get aboard the machine?"
Cid exploded with a bellow. "Can fish swim? Who do you think you're talking to!"
Cid nodded to his chief engineer and spun the ship's wheel so that they were on a direct course to the Giant, leaving the rest of the fleet behind them.
"Everyone, direct your fire at the Giant's arms and keep away from the mouth!" Cid shouted over the communication device.
"Best hold on tight!" Cid called out to the rest of them, as he flew them closer to the automaton, dodging fire and fiends that had risen as a swarm to intercept the ship.
"Golbez' minions at their finest!" Cid laughed maniacally. "Fire the cannons!"
Explosions on either side of the ship sent shrapnel into the wings of the fiends, tearing them to misted shreds. The winged fiends toppled over each other, screeching, as the wounded fell on the uninjured, knocking each other out of the way as the airship streaked past at breakneck speed.
Rydia clutched onto the railing, looking over her shoulder at Cid. His piloting was just as frightening as she remembered.
"Before I forget!" Cid called out, pointing to one of his subordinates. "Get that thing the old coot wanted us to bring along!"
The crewman ran below deck, arriving a few minutes later with a long bundle wrapped in leather.
"Cecil, the sword the smith promised you!" Cid shouted down to Cecil on the deck, who accepted and unwrapped the proffered item with a perplexed expression. "He seemed to think now might be a good time to put it to use!"
The newly forged sword was beautiful in the light, but now was not the time to admire its handiwork, and Cecil sheathed it as Cid dodged another band of fiends.
Cid flew them directly toward the Giant's mouth and had the ship hover as close as he could without damaging it.
"Now's our chance!" FuSoYa shouted, positioning himself where there was a gap in the railing.
"Jump? From this distance?" Rosa quailed, staring at the Lunarian with wide eyes.
"Amateurs," FuSoYa complained, gesturing them all together. "Link hands."
Rosa clutched Rydia's hand and Rydia glanced at Edge before he reluctantly offered her his own.
FuSoYa chanted the teleport spell, enveloping all of them in magic that swept them swiftly off of the deck of the airship and onto the platform that comprised the Giant's mouth. The automaton jolted and shook with each bombardment from the tanks and airships below, and the five of them fought to keep their footing while FuSoYa inspected a panel on the Giant's exterior.
He slid a few slender stones across a console and a door opened, sliding into a pocket.
"Come," he said, beckoning them within.
Machinery churned and whirred on the inside of the Giant, and lights streamed along wires and panels, carrying information from one end of the Giant to the other.
The five of them paused when what had appeared to have been parts of the machinery came to life; legs unfolding from metal boxes and eye stalks rising to inspect the humans.
"Intruder. Intruder. Intruder. Un-authorized humans aboard juggernaut," a floating scanner chimed—just before a well-aimed Thundaga melted its circuits to liquid metal on the floor.
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There were moments when lucidity would enter Kain's mind like a merciless hot coal and burn the rest of his consciousness bare. They were frail, dangerous things, these moments, and they struck when he could least afford the distraction. Memories of the life he had left behind.
Friends—he could picture them now and again. Yes, he had had them once. They were on a doomed mission he was no longer following, and her face was among them, as well. Her fingers were twined with those of another, and with her other hand, she was pushing Kain away. A tease.
Kain woke with a jolt, the memories retreating to the back of his mind as if icy fingers had pried them there. There was little time left to the night, and there was little reason to stay abed, so Kain drew on his clothing and armor, and left the sparse quarters he had been allocated within the tower.
He had little to fear in the absence of the Archfiends, but he always traveled armed and kept his spear at his side, knowing how Golbez's other appointed lieutenants viewed his return. A turncoat twice turned was friend to none.
Kain straightened his back, slipping into his old role. Upon his return, he had been tasked with monitoring the crystal manifold. The crystals had been systematically fitted into the apparatus that harnessed and focused their energy into the pulse that shielded the tower. Kain had not been told the specific details of this process, but he was aware of its affiliation with the twin moon and its importance to the master's plans.
Golbez was conducting a summoning of a sort, one that required an uninterrupted flow of power through the crystals, and one that hinged entirely upon the perfect alignment of the manifold. If there was tampering, Kain was responsible for reporting—and correcting it—by any means necessary.
Kain walked around the outside of the manifold, glimpsing through several inches of glass as ribbons of light spread like frayed webs from one crystal to the next. They were filaments that tangled and reacted with each other, fusing to cause sparks in colors so fierce, Kain's eyes had trouble identifying them. The manifold was enormous and self-contained, and emitted a whine that Kain could tolerate for only a few minutes before he had to leave the surrounding room.
Kain had never been a student of magic, nor could he claim to understand it; but he found himself imagining that the crystals themselves were screaming in this unnatural configuration.
Closing the heavy maintenance door behind him, he sighed. The crystals were simply tools.
There were no irregularities to report, and as such, his concerns were numbed to insignificance.
He returned to the main corridor, ignoring the dark looks from Golbez's other vassals. They were all traitors to their kings and countries, some more human than others, and Kain was one of them—but was not.
Some took off down adjacent corridors, feigning business, and others crossed their arms at his approach.
Kain strode past them, into the room Golbez had deemed his center of operations.
A woman with long copper hair tied back in a rope braid was just standing as he entered. Yet another declaration of fealty to the lord of darkness, Kain mused. She was one of the few humans Golbez tolerated as company among his legions of monsters, and Kain felt a flash of jealousy at knowing he was only one of many.
The woman bumped shoulders with him as she passed him by, affording him a single pointed look before leaving with effortless, cat-like strides.
"What is your report," Golbez said without preamble, waving him lazily into the room.
Kain bristled at the cold welcome. "The manifold is undamaged and functioning normally."
"Good," Golbez acknowledged with a nod, turning his back to the dragoon to study a screen that showed the alignment of the planet and its moons.
"Was there anything else?" Kain asked, desperate to be of use.
"Would you care to be present when your friends are put to their deaths?" Golbez asked, placing a calculated look over his shoulder.
"Absolutely," Kain answered.
"Dismissed," Golbez told him with another flippant wave of his hand.
Kain gave a curt bow and left the room, returning to the corridor where the crowds had thinned.
The alignment of the moon with the tower was nearly complete, and there would soon be an ending to everything the world had known.
In the meantime, those who had pledged themselves loyal to Golbez would ensure that nothing interfered with those plans. Kain tightened the grip he held on his spear, proceeding down the corridors that were his to guard. He would see to it especially that Cecil was not one such interference.
0-0-0-0-0-0
"Why was this Giant built?" Cecil demanded, removing his blade from another stilt-legged drone as it sizzled with sparks from ruined wires.
"We had no way of knowing what we might find on another planet," FuSoYa explained, out of breath from casting. "We built the Giant as a way to clear large areas of debris and to level terrain. And, of course, to reduce the threat from hostile life forms."
"How convenient that it's now doing that on an inhabited island," Edge added angrily, only a few steps behind them, as he kicked a drone's head out of his way. "It isn't as if this was a kingdom that was once home to thousands."
FuSoYa's expression became grim. "It is unfortunate, but dwelling on it will not solve our immediate problem. We must reach the giant's core if we want to preserve what is left of this land, and before the Giant widens its path of terror."
"What operates the Giant?" Rosa asked.
"The Giant is controlled by a Central Processing Unit located in its belly. It is programmed to direct the Giant's trajectory and to monitor its internal systems."
"So Golbez can use this to level any kingdom he wishes while never having to soil his hands?" Edge seethed.
"That is the idea, yes," FuSoYa answered, pointing to another stairwell. "And it would seem he has released a swarm of drones to hinder us."
Edge threw a shuriken into the eye stalk of another drone the moment it came into view, causing its laser to aim wide. "How exactly do we disable its Central Processing Unit?" he asked, drawing a single katana to slice through another drone.
"We should focus on reaching it first," FuSoYa retorted, fluidly speaking a spell that sluiced directly through the armor of a mechanical horse and rider. The thundaga spell bore through the floor as well, damaging the tiles that lined the catwalk so that they sizzled and whined as the five of them hurried past.
Laser bearing fiends plagued them along several levels as they worked their way downward, tearing apart the floor grating and snapping cables. Catwalks lurched and hung precariously, causing them to jump from one platform to the next.
Rydia glanced downward only once, trying not to entertain the possibility of falling onto parts of the machinery in each compartment.
They kept running—along narrow bypasses and past panels lined with tubes that ran vertically down the neck of the Giant.
"Is there anything we can do to interrupt its weapons?" Cecil asked, squeezing through a narrow access that was choked with criss-crossing pipes.
"To do that, we would need to separate, and there would be no guarantee that we would succeed, let alone, what drones would be set to guard the passages," FuSoYa said, squeezing after Cecil until the path widened again.
"Intruder—intruder—intruder," a nauseatingly familiar alarm sounded from ahead.
"Rosa!" Cecil shouted, yanking her down by the hand as a beam shot where she had just been standing.
"Damn these drones!" FuSoYa exclaimed, sending thundaga blazing into three of them at once.
So many events happened simultaneously, that Rydia, who had been following Rosa, barely realized she was watching them unfold from the grated floor.
"Rydia?" Edge asked, shaking her shoulder to get her to look at him. She licked her dry lips, too stunned to form words, let alone wonder why he was shaking her.
"Rosa, we need you," Edge snapped urgently, catching Rydia's eye for a brief moment. She didn't know what had happened, but by the look on his face, she had taken more than a glancing blow.
"Crystals," Rosa murmured, inching her way toward Rydia while spells and ordinance were exchanged overhead.
"That—bad?" Rydia choked out, noticing an alarming gurgle that had crept up her throat.
"Lie still," Rosa ordered gently, weaving words with magic, sending a glow from her finger tips into Rydia's wounded side.
Edge was no longer near her, and neither was Cecil, but she heard swords shearing metal and the pulses from laser cannons. She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the odd discomfort of muscle and vein being sewn back together by threads of magic, but then grunted when all of Rosa's weight fell on her unexpectedly.
Rydia hissed from pain, trying to push the other woman off of her, discovering much to her alarm, that she was covered in the white mage's blood.
"Rosa," she whispered, hoping for a response and receiving none.
Rydia grunted and finally shoved Rosa's limp form off of her. She propped herself up with her hands and smelled burnt flesh and scorched metal.
The enclosed passage before them was flooded with drones, and Cecil and Edge were pinned down, trying to stay out of reach from their electrified lances that paralyzed and stunned.
FuSoYa wasn't much help, clutching onto the catwalk railing several feet away from her with blood speckling his robes.
Rydia closed her eyes and breathed, blocking out the pain from her half-healed injury, and latched on to a different feeling instead. Fury. Exactly what she had told Cecil earlier that she wouldn't do.
The Lunar Crystals responded in kind, supplying the words she required as gentle suggestions. These were not the words FuSoYa had taught her, nor did they promise the same result. These words promised far greater power, and she let them color and paint the meaning of the original incantation however they wished. FuSoYa's clipped and efficient spell became rebellious, like a captured bird seeking freedom, and spread its wings.
Rydia spoke the song of the spell so quickly that time seemed to slow down. A spiral of glittering letters took shape around her just as they had before Bahamut, glowing brightly as each phrase was completed and the harmonies aligned.
Thundaga rained down in a curtain, like a deluge of light and heat and energy that emblazoned everything in its path. It jumped from one drone to the next, like a living thing, until not one remained.
Drones fell to the floor in shimmering sparks, the metal of their cases melting into bubbling puddles on the floor.
Cecil looked at her from over his shoulder, surprised, and Rydia likewise stared back at him. Finally, the paladin frowned, shaking his head, and hastily worked his way back to the three wounded mages.
Cecil knelt beside Rosa, prodding her before finally turning her over. Rosa was limp and lifeless, and he bent over to press his lips to her forehead, whispering what Rydia could only assume was an incantation to revive her.
She sensed the spell take effect without looking, hearing Rosa's first staggered breaths escape her lips; but she was too preoccupied with the slaughtered machinery to pay attention to much else. Edge was picking through the scattered drones, bending to retrieve what she realized were spent shuriken. He dropped the ones he found into the pouch on his belt, though he looked annoyed as he surveyed the melted puddles, finding nothing amid the slag that remotely resembled what he was looking for.
While the others were being tended, Rydia drunkenly rose to her feet, wanting to see what her spell had done. She still felt power lingering beneath her skin, potential energy waiting to be discharged. She stumbled across the grated catwalk until she was standing a few feet from Edge.
"All of them," she muttered, amazed at herself. Never had Thundaga been so potent under her command, save maybe once during the battle with Odin.
Edge stepped into her line of sight, frowning.
"Your eyes—" he began, stopping himself when she lost her balance and he lunged forward to catch her.
"What do you—" she mumbled, falling against him and clutching onto his elbows.
"Idiot, you're not even healed," Edge complained, bracing her upright with his hands while she rested her head on his shoulder.
"What did you mean about my eyes," she repeated, tilting her head to look up at him.
He glanced back at her, saying nothing while he attempted to shift her weight into a different position. "Steady," he told her, ignoring the question.
"I'm fine," she protested.
"So I should let go of you, then," he retorted, sounding exasperated.
Rydia considered his suggestion and pressed her face deeper into the soft part of his shoulder. "Maybe not," she decided.
"Is there anyone able to take care of this one?" Edge called over her head to the group behind them. "I don't want to move her."
Rydia glanced over her shoulder at Rosa; who, though healed, looked too dazed to stand. Instead it was Cecil who came to offer help.
"I can travel," Rydia insisted, still feeling drunk with power.
"You're bleeding," Edge pointed out, helping ease her to the floor so Cecil could take a look at her wound.
She cried out, gritting her teeth, and glared at Edge as if her pain was his fault.
He let out a forced sigh, looking for support from Cecil.
"No, Rydia," the paladin said soundly. "You won't be traveling anywhere for a few minutes."
Rydia tolerated the healing, but found herself wanting to be on her feet immediately; unconsciously tapping a finger on the tile below her. She was excited by this new development. The Lunarian spells coupled with human emotion—the crystals could provide an endless tide of power to do whatever she wished of them. When Cecil had finished his incantations and returned to Rosa and FuSoYa, Rydia looked over at Edge who was still kneeling beside her.
"What was it you said about my eyes?" she asked, now clearer-headed.
He sighed, looking back at her as if he hardly knew her. "They weren't exactly—your own," he explained.
She frowned, uncertain what he really meant by that. "Do you still see that now?" she asked.
He gazed directly into her eyes and she blushed. "No," he answered, perplexed. "They're back to normal."
He broke eye contact and she exhaled slowly, relieved, waiting for the others to catch up to them.
"Ready—or would you like to show off some more?" Edge asked suddenly, offering her his arm with a look of admonishment.
She reluctantly accepted his hand, glaring, and allowed him to pull her to her feet again.
"The drones are likely to increase as we approach the core," FuSoYa informed them, stepping gingerly over the puddles.
"Maybe we should let Rydia go first," Edge suggested as the five of them passed through the passage.
0-0-0-0-0-0
The tower's alarms all went off at once, relaying information in a language Kain had no reference for understanding.
His patrol had been cut short when waves of drones had emerged from their storage compartments and walked in military rows toward the transporter rooms. It was a terrifying sight to behold, and Kain flattened himself against a corridor wall, watching as the machines walked past by the hundreds in all shapes and sizes.
His frustration at being caught unaware, was quickly replaced by the realization that the moon's alignment had finally been achieved. Kain followed the drones at a distance on their march to the transporter rooms, hoping that the abandonment of his post would go unnoticed.
One by one the drones mounted the platforms, being whisked away to unknown coordinates. Kain watched until the lines thinned and eventually disappeared altogether, before he approached the transporter console to view their destination.
An image flashed across the screen—that of a mechanical giant with a grid of lines and words indicating specific points of access to the machine. Kain knew this to be the Giant of Babil he had been told about, and the drones, its mechanical army.
Armored footsteps from the hallway startled him, and Kain crouched behind the consoles to avoid being seen away from his post, feeling foolish about the entire affair.
"My lord, do you require anything else?" a female voice inquired as the footsteps entered the room.
"The drones are in place, and the Giant has been successfully retrieved," Golbez' voice answered distractedly. "If the intelligence out of Baron was correct, the fools are trying to raise a resistance. Ensure that they do not succeed. My legions are at your command."
There was a brief pause. "What about Highwind, my lord?"
"He is no longer of use," Golbez said shortly.
"Understood, my lord," the woman purred, her voice saturated with an unpleasant sort of anticipation.
"I leave the operations of this base under your control," Golbez told the woman, changing the coordinates of the transporter before stepping onto the platform.
A flicker of light accompanied the transporter's activation as Golbez was whisked to some other place, and the woman waited a full minute before she left the room to attend to her duties with soft footfalls. Kain waited a few minutes more until he was sure the room was vacant, before emerging from his hiding place.
Expendable.
Betrayal fused with bruised expectations, and Kain removed his helmet, prepared to throw it furiously onto the tiled floor.
But as he looked down at his helmet, his eyes catching their own reflection in the curve of the metal, his hands shook.
He had been chosen.
He had retrieved the crystals by his master's commands. He had done violence in his master's name. But now—here at the end of all things, Golbez had declared him unfit for service and supplanted him with a new pawn. This victory was supposed to have been Kain's as well. The new world was supposed to be his world as well.
No.
Kain glanced at the new coordinates Golbez had entered, and saw it was the remote access control chamber. From that room, with consoles that answered to Golbez' touch alone, he could control the Giant's movements remotely. Without the Crystals' energy flowing through the Tower, amplifying its power, however….
Striding down the winding Tower corridor, Kain headed for the one place he was sure would garner his master's attention.
The crystal manifold.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Drones plummeted to the ground on either side of Rydia, peppering her hair with sparks. The clothes beneath her leather armor were mottled with holes, and her skin was singed.
She had, at Edge's suggestion, taken the lead to cast magic in violent bursts, while he and Cecil covered her advance. Energy surged through her, propelling her footsteps.
She focused on any thought that entered her mind, on any situation that caused her fear or anger. She spoke words with her mouth, but their meaning and intent was changed long before her lips. This strategy had morphed her spells into wild, feral creations.
She manipulated lightning, commanding it like a hunting hound. It sought out and destroyed drones on either side of the catwalk, acting as if it had a mind of its own.
"We're almost to the core!" FuSoYa exclaimed, bringing up the rear.
This quickened their steps, as they sprinted down the service passages that ran circular to the Giant's operating systems and gears.
"This machine is the most impressive clockwork soldier I've ever had the displeasure of dismantling," Edge remarked, climbing a ladder and tossing shuriken in two well aimed arcs at Searching Drones.
The covered passages eventually gave way to broader compartments. The catwalks were more exposed, suspended over gears and pistons that rose and fell with the Giant's movements.
Rydia kept her magic poised on her tongue, sensing a glow at her fingertips, and was amazed that she had been able to maintain a trance for so long. Her magic stood ready to be released with one single word, so long as the emotion or thought she'd honed in on remained clear and palpable.
FuSoYa walked beside her, staring at her in amazement. "Here, I thought to teach you ourways thinking they were the only way," he said quietly. "I had thought your methods to be inferior, but you interpret this power in ways we never thought to explore."
"I have always been myself," Rydia answered, distracted enough by his interruption, that her trance fizzled out and the energy left her like sweat evaporating from skin. It was only in her magic's absence that Rydia discovered how exhausted she had become and how little she remembered of the last few hours.
FuSoYa reluctantly shook his head. "Tell me….the crystals—how did you know to cast that magic?"
Rydia pinched her eyes shut, staving off a headache, and finally turned her head to look at him; realizing he meant the duel with Bahamut . "I listened to them," she explained for the second time.
"I can assure you, the crystals have no voices—not in the way you are thinking," FuSoYa argued.
"They speak your language," she disagreed.
The Lunarian agitatedly cleared his throat, like that of a teacher preparing to school his student. "They were programmed as such," he said.
"No, it's more than that," Rydia said, shaking her head. "These have a consciousness."
FuSoYa pursed his lips, annoyed by her answer. "It seems as though you've accessed…no," he interrupted himself, rubbing his forehead with his index finger and thumb.
"Accessed what?" Rydia asked stubbornly.
FuSoYa narrowed his eyes at her. "The core programming of the crystals," he answered. "Dormant quadrants normally partitioned off."
"I don't understand," she complained.
"You wouldn't," he said dismissively. "In fact, I've no idea how you did it."
She waited with anticipation for more.
"What you're sensing—" FuSoYa began and then stopped himself again. "It is an elaborate program."
"They feel like they have a will of their own," Rydia objected, having learned more by the hour about the Lunar Crystals than she'd realized.
"They are—"
Rydia waited again, eyeing him.
"—Remnants," he concluded. "Of the ones we could not bring with us."
Rydia frowned, sensing fatigue blurring the edges of her vision and dulling her hearing, and wondered if she had heard him correctly. "Your people…?" she asked.
"The knowledge and history of our people is bound to those crystals. What better way to preserve a race than through a power that will outlive us?"
"But the magic—what I've cast—"
He shook his head. "Will eventually return to its source," he explained. "The Crystals are clever tools. They create a network, a ceaseless loop . They balance, check, and stabilize each other. Magic that is cast, eventually cycles back to its source. You have not damaged them."
FuSoYa then studied her with a shrewd eye. "The Eidolons, however, are an anomaly. They are beings capable of feeding off of the crystals' energy, but transforming that energy into an unknown form. Your planet, for reasons I don't understand, has not only drained the crystals of functionality, but evolved a peculiar co-dependence on them."
"The Eidolons are interrupting the cycle of magic?" Rydia asked, finding this new information alarming.
"I believe so, yes. And whether because of them or some other event, rampant magic has led to a secondary evolution on your planet. The fiends…and a new breed of human."
"What are you saying, exactly?" Rydia asked, aghast.
"That you walk a strange path, Summoner. Neither here nor there," he answered. "You are a mage in one sense, yet you walk amid the beasts of the veil."
"Is either of those a bad thing?" she asked quietly.
"That remains to be seen. Caught between these two paradigms, you may undergo a transformation of your own. All I know is that no energy is ever truly lost, Summoner. It simply changes," FuSoYa replied evenly. "It would be interesting to-"
"Stop!" Edge's voice cut in from ahead.
Rydia's gaze was pinned to the front of the group in an instant, wondering what he had seen and where she was needed.
"Go back!" he shouted, waving furiously to the other side of the suspended catwalk.
The others didn't question the order, running for an anchored walkway, but Rydia held her ground, preparing another spell.
Edge sprinted toward her, stumbling as a billowing cloud of flames rocked the catwalk behind him. Smoke choked the passageway, and Rydia squinted, unable to make out the lithe ninja's form let alone the source of the flames.
The smoke thinned in uneven patches, and Rydia saw glistening metal plates and the vague form of a dragon behind it.
"Down!" Edge snapped, appearing out of the haze and yanking her down to the floor as a strange hissing sound preempted the eruption of another spurt of flame. It snarled down the length of the catwalk, heating the metal to cherry red. Rydia stared over her shoulder, feeling sweat bead her skin from the heat. The catwalk groaned and then snapped, one of its cables breaking at the joint. She and Edge lurched with it, falling into the railing that, while not glowing with heat, still retained it. Rydia cried out in pain as the cables branded into her shoulder and back.
She screamed a series of words together, letting her pain direct them, and felt the Crystals' power mingle with her thoughts, unleashing blizzaga on the catwalk.
"Shi—" Edge bit off a curse, noticing a split-second too late, what she had done.
The spell spiraled through the grated catwalk and along its cables, quick-freezing the metal. It creaked and popped, like brittle china, and Rydia felt some relief from the oozing wounds on her back with the on-rush of cold.
When Edge suddenly wrapped her with his arms, anchoring them to the side railing, she too realized what she had done.
The remaining far cables snapped, damaged by the extreme temperatures, and the catwalk suddenly fell to one side, like a pendulum.
Rydia felt the sickening sensation of weightlessness, as they swung at the mercy of the metal contraption. It lurched, unchecked, and plowed into glass. The impact loosened Edge's grip on the railing, sending them both sprawling gracelessly into a small room.
Rydia remained still for several minutes, laying flat on her back, too afraid to move. Everything felt broken or on fire.
She heard Edge slowly getting up somewhere behind her, scattering pieces of glass.
"Blizzaga?" he seethed, and she winced, hearing the anger in his voice.
She slowly sat up, crying out in pain, and glanced up at him. "I wasn't thinking!" she shot back, hissing as glass dug into her palms.
"Yes, there's been a lot of that lately," he scoffed.
"I'm sorry—what else did you expect me to do?" she demanded.
"Run!" He snapped. "Did you think you could singlehandedly defeat this thing? You're not infallible, Rydia. I don't care how powerful your magic is."
"I said I was sorry!" she insisted.
He glared and hopped over part of the twisted catwalk toward a door on the other side.
"This is exactly the kind of bullshit that first years' pull," he muttered to himself, pulling at the broken control panel and twisting its cables until he touched two snapped ends and caused the door's lock to override.
There was a great deal of noise in the large chamber they had plummeted out of moments before, and Rydia noticed flashes of light from dragon flame, as it reflected off of the scattered pieces of glass around her.
"Are the two of you alright?" Cecil shouted down to them, sounding harried.
"We're alive!" Rydia shouted back.
"Debatable," Edge grumbled, pulling on the door until it opened, and then casting an annoyed look in Rydia's direction. "Can you move?"
"We'll find our way down to you!" Cecil called out to them again, his voice lost in the sound of a dragon's mechanical roar.
Rydia grimaced, prying herself up from the floor. The burns on her back would have to be borne until they intercepted Rosa, but she decided it was manageable. She stumbled after Edge, gingerly climbing over what was left of the catwalk and through the narrowly opened door.
Edge walked quickly, and Rydia followed him at a distance, trying to ignore the irritating sensation of her oozing burns, and focused instead on placing one foot in front of the other.
They followed the circular corridor, searching for some kind of staircase or lift, but found none.
A small group of drones appeared around a curve, and Edge drew one sword, cutting through them with a series of quick forms. He used his blade to slice through the eye stalks of the drones before they could attack, leaving them to swivel around in confusion.
Rydia frowned, realizing he had left them for her to finish off, and began to chant. She had little emotion or energy left, certainly nothing to fuel a trance, and relied on the words FuSoYa had taught her. She half-heartedly blazed her own path through the damaged drones, feeling that her magic had been bound in a mechanical, unnatural way—that these studied words were the chains that bound her magic to her will.
The drones fell into piles of scrap, and Edge had barely slowed down to assist, let alone care how she had fared. He remained sullen and silent, and after a while, Rydia became annoyed.
"Are you not going to speak to me?" she asked bitterly, speaking to the back of his head.
He gave her a withering look over his shoulder, and she crossed her arms, giving him an equally dark look.
"Can we not even fight beside each other, anymore?" she asked.
Edge refused to acknowledge the question, more moody than usual.
"What is it with you?" she hissed at him as they briskly left bulkhead after bulkhead behind them.
Edge ignored this too, adjusting his footing as a jolt in the machinery momentarily lurched them sideways. Finally he looked at her.
"Who are you?" he snapped back.
Rydia staggered.
"What are you talking about?" she demanded, feeling the beginnings of an old argument returning.
"Whatever mage—summoner—you're adapting into, bears little resemblance to you," he said. "You defeated Bahamut with magic I've never seen; that even that fussy Lunarian hadn't seen. What power are you playing with?"
Rydia recalled the out of body experience that battle had been. She remembered the sensation of Flare's power flowing through her.
"A spell I didn't learn from any book," she retorted.
"You've started to act like someone possessed," he complained.
"Are you saying that I've become a pawn of Zemus-?" Rydia asked heatedly.
He narrowed his eyes at her. "Drunk on your own power? Desiring the highest order of spells? It's not that much of a leap, is it."
Rydia recalled their conversation in Mysidia, feeling as if it had taken place months ago and not mere weeks.
"I would never have learned them in time," Rydia explained, fidgeting with her robes as she walked. "To learn from pages and by recitation, it would have taken months—years."
"What exactly did FuSoYa teach you," Edge wanted to know, probing for answers.
"He taught me the words to the spells I already knew."
Edge made a strange expression, disbelieving. "What about the rest?"
Rydia arched a brow, staring back at him with equal intensity. "The rest of what?"
"It was Quake, wasn't it?" he asked evenly. "The spell you had so much trouble with in the Underworld, yet you cast it so precisely on the Lunar caverns."
"That was…"
"Without the help of the old man," he pointed out. "So what was it?"
Rydia crossed her arms again. "I already told you," she huffed. "I listened to the crystals, and they spoke through me."
Edge stopped walking to turn completely around. "Spoke through you," he repeated, incredulously.
"Yes," she said, going slightly pale. "They provided the words that I needed."
"And Bahamut?" he asked.
"I only spoke the words FuSoYa taught me," she lied.
Edge shook his head, grinning darkly. "Liar."
Rydia bristled at the accusation.
"You were casting magic with words you'd never used before—with words FuSoYa never taught you."
"How would you—"
Edge pointed to his ears. "You know better than to ask me that."
Rydia breathed out sharply through her nose. "I don't need his words, after all," she admitted. "His spells…they're efficient and powerful, but they barely go beyond the surface of what the Lunar Crystals can do."
Edge shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "You decided you knew better."
"I can handle this," she argued.
"That last spell damn near killed you." Edge said irately.
"I can control it," she insisted.
"Can you?" he asked.
"FuSoYa has expressed no concern," she volleyed, feeling color rise to her cheeks. Fighting enemies was one thing, but arguing with a friend was another entirely.
Edge made a face, looking at her with disappointment. "He is a man of science," he said. "He wouldn't care if the furnace of the underworld devoured you, so long as he could learn something from it."
"Then why are you concerned—my magic has saved your skin more often than I can count."
"Because if you're doing what I think you're doing, you're placing yourself in more danger than you realize."
"What do you think I'm doing?" she asked, perplexed.
"When you cast Blizzaga, what thought was on your mind at that precise moment?" he asked.
"I don't know—anger, pain, fear" she answered.
He sighed.
"You're trancing," he realized. "I know this magic, Rydia. I didn't recognize it at first, and the Lunarian spells were troublesome enough, but this is not magic to play games with. It's powerful—and dangerous."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "How would you—"
"You're feeding your spells with emotion, with your own energy," he interrupted her.
"Isn't that how you cast your magic?" she scoffed, balling her hands into fists. "Hypocrite."
He grimaced at the accusation. "It's a powerful fuel, yes, but without focus, it does whatever it wants," he said, speaking the words as if he had said them many times before.
"You sound rehearsed," she observed.
"You weren't wrong," he admitted, beginning to walk again. "But what you cast by incantation, is a skill my people spend our entire lifetimes trying to duplicate. The closest we ever come is through trance and meditation. It is unreliable at best, deadly at worst. Our magic comes from here," he said, placing his hand over his heart.
"You seem able to control it well enough. If you can, why can't I?" she asked.
He caught her eye just then, and she was stunned to see he might actually provide her answer.
"Your source," he said matter-of-factly. "I could never hope to rival the powers you have access to at the tip of your talented tongue."
"You were born with magic," Rydia realized, keeping up with him.
Edge sighed. "Our magic answers to no crystals and to no other master but ourselves."
Rydia stared at him. "Your people are—"
"An interesting sample of breeding," he replied curtly. "One I'm sure FuSoYa would love to study and add to his collection."
Rydia set her jaw.
"Our magic can be volatile," he went on. "But nowhere near as volatile as yours. You have the crystals, a limitless energy source. Where your thoughts apply that energy…you have more destructive power in one misspoken word than this entire giant has in the palm of its hands."
"You're afraid of me," she ventured.
"I'm afraid of what might happen to you if you continue to pursue this level of magic," he answered.
"What are you saying, exactly?"
"You may give too much of yourself that you can't take back," he warned. "You're a mage, Rydia. You were never meant to wield magic this way. In fact, I didn't know mages could."
Rydia had no time to continue their argument, sprinting ahead to chant Thundaga at a drone that had skittered into view.
Once the hallway was empty again, she looked back at Edge. "You said you know this magic," she tested him. "You know its nature, so what could happen if I lose control?"
He met her with an even stare. "You'll get yourself killed," he said simply, and then, as an afterthought, added: "And you know how I feel about being left with the old man."
0-0-0-0-0-0
Halfway to the Crystal manifold, Kain's footsteps faltered. Golbez' attentions were fixed elsewhere, and a moment of sharp lucidity pierced Kain's mind.
His own suppressed thoughts swam to the surface, recalling conversations from days past and hours earlier.
The crystal manifold. He had been going there—why? To anger his master? To sabotage his master's plans?
Expendable.
Kain practically laughed, remembering how sorely he had felt the remark. Now back to his senses, it rang hollow. It may have been his own damn weakness that had led him back to this place, but he had more pride than this.
His original motives had been infantile, fueled by childish jealousy and the demand for his master's attention; but regardless of what his manipulated mind had conjured, it was a sound plan.
Sabotage the manifold. Force Golbez to abandon his sanctuary in the tower and take command of the Giant itself. He couldn't possibly control two places at once, giving Cecil another chance to strike while Golbez was looking for loose ends and saboteurs.
Cecil, Kain thought regrettably. How can I possibly ask for forgiveness now…
When Kain reached the door of the maintenance chamber that surrounded the manifold, he paused, feeling as though he was being watched. He glanced to either side, saw nothing, and opened the door.
There was a large console that provided readings of the crystals' output. Information flashed across a glass screen, and Kain glanced at it briefly, not understanding a word. Instead, he leaned his spear against it, and scoured the console for the modified controls that Lugae had designed. The Lunarian technology was controlled by crystals and stones, and answered only to Golbez. Lugae had adapted the technology to be used by others, and Kain's fingers skimmed the top of the console as he read words in the common tongue.
At last, in an octagonal formation were switches that read, "Alignment".
He moved one of the toggles, noticing new information flash across the glass screen as one of the crystals moved slightly out of formation. The other crystals tried to compensate, and light arced across the space, beginning to flow in a slow, undulating wave.
Kain glanced at the manifold, wondering how much it would take to move the crystals completely out of sync.
He moved a different toggle on the opposite side of the first. This crystal also moved, and the transfer of energy between the crystals changed again, adapting to this alteration. The wave of magical energy was both long and short, bouncing between each crystal at different rates.
He tested a third and fourth alignment, causing the energy wave to bend and become so tenuous that it nearly lost its integrity.
"Step away from the console," a woman's voice snapped.
Kain looked up, but his hands never left the console. The woman with copper hair, bound in a braid between her shoulders, was standing in the doorway with a thin blade drawn.
"You were speaking to Golbez earlier," he said. "Strange, I don't remember seeing you before."
"You wouldn't," she said smoothly. "Because I was too busy gaining ground for lord Golbez, while you were wasting his time with your failures."
"Who are you?" he asked, making a number of assumptions about her already.
"Griffon," she answered, sneering.
"Here to protect your master's treasure?" he inquired with a tinge of sarcasm.
"He who controls the power, controls the world," she answered with a shrug, gliding into the room. "And I will protect the master's interests."
"I feel badly for your former master," Kain remarked, taking into account her gait, her carriage, and identifying her sword as one typical to the islands of Eblan.
"Don't," she advised, stepping closer still. "He received his just reward."
"Step any closer and I'll destroy the manifold," Kain threatened, poising his fingers back over the controls.
She paused, considering him. "Wasn't that always your intention?"
"I had intended to survive the process," he replied. "I'm always open to alternatives."
She pursed her lips and glared as they sized each other up.
Kain knew that she probably had him on speed, but he was closest to the console. Any move she made he could anticipate. He hoped.
Her left hand slowly drifted just behind her back, and Kain had traveled enough with Edge to know what she was reaching for.
There was a moment of silence, a deep breath, and then they both moved. Kain threw each of the toggles into a different orientation and kicked his spear into his left hand. But he hadn't been fast enough to avoid the kunai that the woman, Griffon, had backhandedly thrown. It struck him just between pauldron and breastplate and he cursed as it tore into the soft flesh of his shoulder.
Griffon had sprinted forward with her sword, all the while, alarms were sounding and lights were flashing in the maintenance chamber. The Crystals were pulsing unnaturally loud, whining at a pitch that was earsplitting, as she spun and drew her katana toward Kain's mid-section with furious speed.
He staggered as he attempted to push her back with his spear, and she relentlessly beat at his weapon, changing the direction of each attack with quick footwork. Kain had to work hard to keep up with her, striving to ignore the pain in his shoulder.
She had angled him away from the console, and hastily tried adjusting the toggles to correct the misalignment. Nothing happened, and Kain used her distraction to sweep his spear across both of her shoulders. She deftly bent backwards at the hips to avoid being flattened, and slashed at him angrily once she had righted herself.
"What have you done!" she seethed, pointing at the manifold that was now glowing so intensely it hurt to look upon.
Kain grinned menacingly. "Made Golbez' day a little brighter."
She grinned back, shaking her head. "Bastard," she cursed, lunging forward again with her sword.
He meant to dodge, but in that moment, the thick glass that surrounded the manifold cracked and shattered, sending shards flying in every direction.
The both of them were thrown from their feet, sliding across the floor while threads of the Crystals' energy exploded into the room, snarling and popping and raising tiles from the floor. A tendril of magic bounced off of Kain's armor and he screamed with immense pain from the contact. It felt like a current of lightning had jumped into his bones and teeth, making his heart skip several uncomfortable beats.
The Crystals seethed for a few minutes more and then suddenly dimmed, flickered, and ceased pulsing altogether; the currents no longer flowing from one Crystal to the next. There was nothing but a low, ponderous thrum emitted from the manifold as it powered down.
Kain coughed, rolling over, and pried the kunai from his shoulder, letting it skitter across what was left of the floor with a dull clatter.
His vision had gone dark around the edges, and he was having difficulty comprehending up from down.
Several feet away, Griffon was pushing herself to her feet, brushing glass and tile shards from her clothing. She stared down at him coldly, and in Kain's eyes, there appeared to be two of her.
"Poison," he slurred, unable to pry himself from the floor. "That's hardly fair."
"Life isn't fair, precious," she jeered, slamming the hilt of her sword against the back of his head, and blacking out the world.
~ 0 ~ 0 ~
When Kain's eyes opened next, he found himself in the transporter room, bound, and on the floor.
Golbez was furiously typing in coordinates on the transporter console, muttering curses.
Kain fiddled with the ropes binding his wrists, and his armor clunked on the floor beneath him as he struggled to undo them. Golbez turned at the sound.
His eyes were like flint, glowering from beneath his helmet, and his lips were set into a firm straight line. Kain knew enough from a look like that to fear for his life, but in that moment, he found he no longer particularly cared whether he lived or died.
"I leave you alone for five minutes," Golbez said severely, completing the coordinates he had already entered. "And in that span you have amazed me with your incompetence."
Kain grinned, fully knowing how much inconvenience he had just dealt his former master. "It seems I'm not as expendable as you thought," he said boldly.
"No," Golbez mused, walking toward him and dragging him to the transporter by his arms. "But I should have known better controlling someone with as weak a mind as yourself."
"You might call it weakness, but I call it strength," Kain replied, wincing when his shoulders slammed sharply into the first step.
"What strength," Golbez mocked coldly. "You were nothing but a jealous, bitter fool when I found you."
"Yet even then I had friends," Kain answered. "Despite my flaws."
Golbez pulled him the remaining distance so that they were both positioned on the transporter platform together. He laughed, and it was a mirthless sound.
"And now it seems you'll have the opportunity to watch the death of your friends' firsthand after all," Golbez assured him, activating the platform that whisked them both from the tower.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
They walked in silence, efficiently dispatching the few drones that intercepted them. Edge brooded, but Rydia felt her heart race anxiously. Now that she understood Edge's magic, she wanted to discuss it further. There were layers there that she had barely begun to peel back, but it was his adamant concern for her that struck her the most.
He could control his own magic neatly and quickly. Could he teach her to do the same?
You were never meant to wield magic this way.
They were words that pierced, dredging up feelings of anger and inadequacy. Rydia had found a power greater than anything she'd ever wielded before, and now she was supposed to disregard it?
This was a magic she had learned in her own way, through her own peculiar connection to the crystals. This was her magic and no others'. She chewed on her bottom lip, trying to convince herself that he was wrong.
Madness. Was that what had caused her lapses in memory and in judgment—her magic?
She kept her concerns to herself, and walked beside Edge through the circling passage. It took the two of them several turns and ladders to find signs of the others.
"Finally," Rosa said with relief when Rydia had walked into sight. The white mage's shoulders were slumped, but she looked glad. "What were you thinking, holding your ground?" she asked.
Rydia glanced guiltily at Edge. "I was startled," she lied.
"What about the dragon?" Edge asked Cecil.
"Destroyed," the paladin replied, unbothered, though his armor appeared scorched and his clothing, singed.
Edge nodded knowingly, and the group was quiet a moment.
"We've gone off-course," FuSoYa announced, pointing to an access panel. "We need to descend, not walk in circles."
Cecil helped his uncle pry the heavy door open, and the rest of them stepped closer to peer into the passage.
"Rydia!" Rosa gasped, causing the summoner to jump while she immediately busied herself with the burns on Rydia's back.
Rydia cried out in surprise, feeling cool fingers touch her wounded skin.
"You've been walking with these wounds this whole time?" Rosa asked, pursing her lips.
Rydia sighed. "I was doing a good job of ignoring them until now…" she muttered.
"Heal her quickly, and come along," FuSoYa scolded, climbing into the narrow shaft. It was wide enough for only one person on the ladder at a time, and the Lunarian went first.
Rosa completed her ministrations, which in Rydia's mind, had taken twice as long as normal, and they followed the Lunarian into the shaft.
The shaft ended at another chamber within the giant that housed large cylindrical vats on both sides of a walkway. The chamber boomed with the sound of pumps and pistons and liquid rushing through pipes that crossed the room in grids and at angles.
"Coolant," FuSoYa explained. "The CPU emits an enormous amount of heat. These tanks and pipes provide the necessary relief for the operating unit."
They followed the grated walkway, having to duck and squeeze through portions as pipes crossed the passage. The sound of coolant hissed through the pipes, moving at high speeds.
"Something's strange here," Edge observed, frowning.
"What is it?" Cecil asked, stopping a moment.
Edge cast his eyes to either side of the walkway, stiffening. "That hissing sound—it isn't just the pipes. There's something else here."
Rydia gazed at the pipes and the dark recesses between the vats. There were plenty of places for things to hide, but so far, it had seemed that the entire space was theirs.
"Listen," Edge ordered, pointing up.
"It's nothing," FuSoYa dismissed. "It's the sound of the machine, nothing more. Any defensive mechanisms in this room would have the potential to damage the tanks, thereby disabling the giant. There shouldn't be any such drone in here."
They were quiet for a few more moments, and then Cecil decided to agree with his uncle, cautiously walking onward.
The farther into the nexus of vats and pipes they traveled, the louder the disorienting noises became.
The walkway split into a crossway on either side of the main, dividing into several more access paths for maintenance. Rydia glanced down each direction, baffled, but spun back around when she heard Cecil bite off a strangled cry and stumble, hitting his head on a pipe with a loud hollow thud.
She thought he might have tripped, but her eyes glimpsed a quickly retreating limb, like the thick root of a tree, uncoiling from around Cecil's neck and disappearing into shadow. The paladin crumpled to the floor, holding his temple, while Rosa knelt beside him, frowning as she spoke healing through her words. The white mage was focusing harder than usual, enough for Rydia to hear the uncertainty in her voice, but she was far more alarmed by what it was that had attacked them—it had been unusual and random for anything to strike at them from the shadows.
"What—" Rydia squawked out, lurching as something cold and clammy wrapped around her ankle and pulled her backwards with such force that she had no time to balance herself.
She fell hard onto the grated floor, feeling its grooves dig into her skin, and leaving her dazed.
"At last you've come," a terrifying baritone voice bounced through the metal chamber, as the strange limbs retreated into darkness and left them alone again. Rydia sat up, and the voice's echo tickled her ears, making her look every which way. She recognized it, and it pained her to realize the Archfiend of Fire was not only alive but in the room with them.
"I've been waiting for this day," a feminine voice sneered. "The giant cannot be stopped."
"But you can," A deep and rasping voice intoned.
"Thissss will be your tomb," another voice spoke from some place that was neither near nor far.
"Where is your master!" Cecil shouted angrily into the vast chamber, standing up. "You're his loyal hounds, so where is he!"
The hissing voice that sounded reminiscent of dry leaves, laughed. "Our masssster Zemussss…"
"Gifted us with life," the voice that sounded of the ocean depths gurgled.
"So that we might rob you of yours," the woman's voice jeered airily.
Rydia's eyes teared as swirling winds gusted through the crawl spaces, stirring up an unnatural haze.
"Archfiends," Edge snarled, drawing both katanas with swift, elegant strokes.
"Ah, the upstart prince," the sonorous voice of Rubicante heckled. "I hoped we might meet again. When last we met, you taught me a great truth—that many are more powerful than one."
Rydia flicked her eyes to Edge, seeing his knuckles taut on the hilts of his swords.
"I will now restore you to full health," Rubicante challenged. "If you wish to see harm to the power source of this Giant, you will have to show us what power you possess!"
Healing magic descended on the five of them, erasing cuts and abrasions, mending pulled tendons and sore muscles, and filling Rydia's mind with a sense of awareness and calm that had been absent with her heavy use of magic.
They waited.
The sound of the machinery hummed and clunked, making it hard to know where their attackers were lurking.
The unsettling feeling of someone's breath on the back of her neck made Rydia spin, checking over her shoulder. A snake-like hissing, a sandpapering of the air, ricocheted off of the pipes around her and she tried to focus on the source of the sound.
Rydia's heart beat in her ears as her eyes vigilantly searched for a target.
"Below!" FuSoYa cried, launching a salvo of words from his mouth. Rydia glimpsed what he had seen, a pair of cataracted eyes staring at her through the grating below her feet.
She froze with fear, noticing how the face attached to the eyes was sunken and dead, a corpse.
Scarmiglione.
Whip-like limbs, the same she had seen before, coiled around the struts beneath the walk. They wrapped around cables, like terrible living vines, the kind that slunk from a nightmare and reeked of death.
FuSoYa's spell erupted, a blast of fire hungrily searching for fuel to burn, and the fiend skittered away, using its strange limbs to hook and swing along the pipes. The Firaga spell petered out; the Archfiend, unharmed.
Cecil drew his sword, the same sword Cid had given him aboard the airship from Kokkol. It was a long blade and broad, with a beautiful guard. Script curved in delicate form down the side of the blade. Rydia was unsure how she recognized the Lunarian words, but didn't dwell on it, leaving the defense of the others in Cecil's care.
Her anxiety made it difficult not to slip into the habit of a trance, especially as she heard the crystals excitedly calling out to her, beseeching freedom. She tried to ignore them, focusing instead on her own steady stream of words. The Lunarian language still felt strange to her ears, clipped and annunciated as it was, but at least it was safe—predictable.
Spells sought their target. Fire and lightning—but they missed each time. One struck the side of a vat and was reflected several times more across the walkway until it finally fizzled into nothing.
Rydia shouted angrily and began again, her chants layering with FuSoYa's. Just as the final phrase of her spell was being spoken, one of Scarmiglione's whip-like limbs thrust a sticky wet gob of fetid muck at her face. She ducked too late and it struck her eyes, adhering to skin. She panicked, and threw in a few choice words at the end of her Firaga spell that the crystals interpreted as permission granted. Her spell went wild, with no direction, but she didn't hear the bellow from the Archfiend as she'd hoped.
Instead, it was Edge who groaned and fell to the floor somewhere beside her. Rydia's heart dropped into her stomach with dread, doubled by her inability to see what had happened. Had she killed him?
"Keep the fiend away from me!" Rosa cried as she rushed forward to assist.
"Rydia, keep your magic in check," she heard from her left. "You're going to get one of us killed!" Cecil barked out.
"I can't see!" she yelped.
"Then let me handle this!" Cecil shouted back, grunting as he deflected something heavy with his sword.
Rydia reluctantly entered the reserve, listening to the battle around her until her vision could be restored.
Edge had returned to his feet, and as soon as he had, it was FuSoYa who grunted and gagged, attacked by the same muck from the Fiend.
"He's targeting the mages!" Edge snarled.
Rosa was chanting, just as she always did during battle. In fact, she never stopped, but her words sounded unsure, unsteady, and Rydia worried something might actually be wrong.
Rydia continued to wait anxiously, and was yanked to the floor again by Scarmiglione, gasping when she hit her head.
"Someone un-blind me so I can fight!" she screamed.
"Mages," she heard Edge mutter from her right.
She tried to sit up again, but a pair of hands held her back down. She snarled and kicked until Edge grumbled. "You asked for assistance?"
"What—" she muttered furiously.
A cool liquid pattered on her face, and then a hand began to scoop the muck from her face. The disgusting goo steamed and hissed at the liquid until the last of the sticky substance had been removed from her face and dripped from her eye lashes.
Rydia's eyes fluttered open to see Edge still poised with a small phial, staring at her exasperatedly.
"Thanks," she said.
"Next time don't burn me to a crisp," he huffed with a peculiar smirk, dragging her to her feet and leaving her to slice at another of Scarmiglione's tentacle-like appendages. One fell cleanly to the floor, wriggling by itself for a few seconds before it lay still and hardened to resemble a tusk. The Archfiend howled and hissed and scrambled up the side of a vat, leering down at them with his white, empty eyes.
FuSoYa chanted the words of another spell, one that Rydia didn't recognize in its Lunar incarnation, and a magic circle surrounded the Fiend. The indistinct shape of clocks, their hands turning backwards, spiraled around Scarmiglione and then burst into wisps of nothing.
Scarmiglione hissed, but it sounded delayed, drawn out as he skittered more slowly along the pipes.
"Strike him now!" FuSoYa commanded.
Rydia cast Firaga, hitting the Archfiend squarely in the chest. He writhed in pain, his strange appendages beating the air, while his corpse-like hands hid his face where skin was falling in strips to the floor.
Cecil ran forward while the Fiend was down, thrusting his sword through the Fiend's defenses and striking the exposed ribs beneath Scarmiglione's arm.
The Fiend lashed out with its limbs, trying to snare Cecil in a choke hold, but Cecil wove and ducked, hacking at the appendages with his sword. Wherever the sword struck, the Fiend developed weeping wounds that steamed and blistered.
The paladin parried and retreated, giving Edge an opening to cast his own magic; Flame snarling around the Fiend's body like a serpent.
FuSoYa and Rydia, too, doubled their efforts, casting in unison. Scarmiglione leaped and dodged as best he could, but the Slow spell that held him prisoner kept his movements to a crawl. Fire burned his legs and arms and blistered them black. He retaliated with his remaining limbs, hurling more foul muck that he plucked from his gullet at them. One gob struck Rosa's eyes, and she bent over, retching, as she tried ineffectively to pry it off of her face.
Cecil lunged forward again, positioning himself in the path of the Fiend and Rosa, and cleaving another of his appendages off in the process. It too, wriggled under its own power before hardening to petrified bone and laying still.
FuSoYa cast one final Firaga, torching the zombie king into a blackened husk that crackled to stillness with bony fingers outstretched.
"They're preventing us from reaching the core of the Giant," FuSoYa complained, running past Scarmiglione.
They followed him, choosing a route that seemed the most central to the CPU.
"All four of them are here," Cecil said as he ran. "We have to assume that they—"
His words were lost when, at an opening between the vats where the walkway was exposed to the side, a torrent of water barreled across it. FuSoYa was swept aside like a leaf, flattened into the cable railings with force. The deluge lurched the entire walkway sideways, sending it swinging as the cables that suspended it twanged uncertainly.
The other four slid to a stop, and saw a giant shape like a tortoise poised on the railings of the walkway parallel to their own.
"You may have passed the weakest of we four, but you will drown in your own blood when I'm through with you," the voice of Cagnazzo boomed at them with a menacing chuckle.
The giant of a tortoise then leaped, landing on the swinging walkway and upsetting its balance even more. FuSoYa's unconscious body rolled with the movement, but they were unable to reach him and, at least for the moment, he was beyond Cagnazzo's notice. Instead, the Fiend swept up a torrent of water and hurled it in their direction. It sped toward them like a cannon and they scattered to the side. Rydia felt her clothing being whipped across her body from the speed of it, and stared in disbelief at the Fiend. She had never faced the Archfiend of Water before, but she imagined the pain of enduring one of his attacks directly.
Cecil held up his shield, attempting to advance, but Cagnazzo hurled great spiraling rivers of water at them, throwing them off balance and pinning them down as he laughed.
Cagnazzo was unrelenting, but Cecil's shield held, dividing the water like a boulder against the tide.
"We need to get past him!" Cecil shouted, strained.
Edge made a disparaging sound as he dodged another ribbon of water. "Obviously! But how do you propose we do that. We can't even advance two feet!"
Rydia found a solution for him, freezing another jet of water with a well-timed Blizzaga, and crackling the entire length of the attack back to its source. Cagnazzo's personal cyclone held him prisoner and froze him to the walkway while he roared angrily. Rydia launched into the incantation for Thundaga with barely a thought in between, allowing the Fiend no time to react.
The spell sparked and chirped as it struck, and Cagnazzo bellowed in pain. The distraction caused the cyclone to fail, and Cecil sprinted forward just as the Fiend was returning to his senses.
Rosa cast Protect in that moment, and the convex shield of blue appeared before the paladin; solidifying, flickering, and then vanishing.
Rydia stared at the space where the spell had been in disbelief, and then glanced at Rosa. The two caught each others' eye and Rydia saw the stricken expression on her face.
"My spells-" Rosa gasped.
Rydia clenched her jaw. She knew well the feeling of powerlessness. But why now? Why had it taken up until now for the white mage to lose her magic?
"They—I can coax some life into them, but they're weak," Rosa explained worriedly.
Huh, Rydia thought, waiting for Cecil to get out of the way of Cagnazzo's feet so she could cast again.
"The Crystals have gone remarkably quiet," Edge observed, weighing in on the conversation.
Rydia conjured another bolt of lightning out of the air, stunning the Archfiend and providing another opening for Cecil.
"What do you mean 'quiet'?" she asked Edge briskly.
"The magic they were emitting up until now," he said, annoyed, throwing a kunai at the Fiend's exposed face to distract him. "It's nowhere near as powerful as it was. Almost as if they're sleeping."
"Sleeping," Rydia repeated, watching Cecil deflect blow after blow with this shield. "But not dead?"
Edge made a face. "Definitely not dead, but something must have happened in the Tower. Whatever spell was shielding it must have shut down because I can't sense it anymore."
Rydia flinched, thinking back to her conversation with FuSoYa. He had said that not all power was lost, but what if all the Crystals had been exhausted at once? Was it possible to weaken them to the point of uselessness? Was it possible to break the Crystals?
She studied the Archfiend and frowned. If the Fiends were still alive, the Crystals had to be. But if the Fiends had been summoned….
"Golbez must be here," she realized.
"My thoughts exactly," Edge seconded.
The both of them noticed they had been slacking in their efforts when Cecil was thrown back by Cagnazzo who had suddenly charged forward and re-woven his cyclone of water to hurl against them.
Rydia chanted Thundaga for a third time, and Edge gathered his own magic to himself. The two of them set off a light show second to none, sending bolts arcing and bouncing around the portion of the walkway occupied by the Archfiend, and blasting his cyclone to vapor.
The Fiend snarled and jumped, bowing the walkway when he landed and snapping and twanging the cables that secured it. The four of them hastily stumbled to recover their footing, and Cecil made sure to wedge himself between the menacing tortoise and the others.
"Why aren't you up there with him?" Rydia asked Edge accusingly.
"Do you see a shield in my possession?" he asked sharply.
She rolled her eyes, and then gasped when Cagnazzo built up momentum and barreled toward them again, leaving them with no choice but to run.
They sprinted down the length of the walkway, glancing over their shoulders with trepidation.
They had run far enough back that they had reached the crossway, when a bright flash of light accompanied by a great clap of thunder shook the space behind them and reverberated against every surface around them. The Archfiend groaned and stumbled, and the four of them slowed to a stop, turning to see what had happened.
Cagnazzo had collapsed, head over heels, and his form was dissolving into clear water, losing distinction, and leaking through the grated floor. Behind him, FuSoYa was laying on the walkway with his hand outstretched, his eyes alight.
They hurried back to the Lunarian, stepping carefully over the slippery metal walkway to join him.
"FuSoYa!" Rosa said in surprise, amazed that the older man had regained consciousness with time enough to spare them.
"I should have taught you our incantations like I taught the Summoner," he complained weakly, still a bit dazed from Cagnazzo's attack.
Cecil helped his uncle to stand on the twisted and bent walkway, and looked at Rosa.
"What do you mean 'should have taught me your incantations'?" Rosa asked quietly.
FuSoYa looked at her brazenly. "In the event that your Crystals failed you, which they have."
"But they're not destroyed!" Rydia protested.
FuSoYa shook his head, glancing at the summoner. "No, not destroyed. But they have just had a significant amount of energy siphoned from them. To expect them to function at full capacity is foolish, just as the Archfiends seem not to be at their proper strength. The magic of this planet has dimmed."
"What am I supposed to do?" Rosa asked.
FuSoYa pursed his lips. "White magic has always been, of the disciplines, the more stable form of magic. It would have to be, since it requires precision and knowledge to the depth that black magic does not. You may only need to learn how to draw from a new source, but whether I can teach you that in the next few minutes, is something I do not know."
"Re-teach me?" Rosa asked, appalled.
"Yes," FuSoYa replied, leading them onward again. "How quick of a study are you?"
Rosa was staring at him, wide-eyed. "Quick enough," she answered.
"Good. Because otherwise my only advice for you is to stay as far back as possible so you won't become a nuisance," he said curtly, descending a staircase toward the core.
0-0-0-0
The wrath of Golbez was not to be underestimated, and Kain had been punished severely for his brief stint of consciousness.
He stood limply at Golbez's side, watching events unfold, but being unable to respond to them. His mind had been broken, and this time, he was unsure if he'd ever be mended again. He had seen inside Golbez' mind. He had seen families being murdered—kingdoms burned to the ground—and himself being responsible for these deaths.
Kain felt ill, but he was trapped inside his own body. There was no need for him to be bound, as his own guilt shackled him, and Golbez let him stand by as he surveyed the Giant's systems from its control room.
The world had run out of time.
But just then, warnings began to sound. There were anomalies inside the giant's systems. Spikes of energy, and damaged circuits; and Golbez cursed loudly.
"Go!" he screamed at Kain, shaking the dragoon vigorously by the collar.
But Kain simply wavered in place, unable to obey or disobey.
Golbez struck him hard across the jaw, and Kain stumbled, recovering his balance like a numb puppet.
"I take away your will and you become even more useless than before!" Golbez shouted, and then stared again at the information streaming across the consoles from the CPU.
"They're like ants," Golbez seethed, sliding crystalline stones across a control board as he sought out more details. "An infestation I can't ignore."
An image flashed through Kain's mind, an image that came from Golbez.
The Archfiends.
"Of course," Golbez mused, staring coldly at the dragoon. "The ones who will not fail me."
Golbez began a summoning in the control room. This was a strange summoning, and one that drew up a circle of magic that encompassed the entire room. Golbez spoke words that were unlike any Kain had heard before, and four shimmering figures appeared within the circle. They coalesced until they had solid form, and Golbez frowned, straining hard to anchor them to reality until each of the four took their first breath.
The summoning circle faded and Golbez slumped, looking more drained by the rite than he ever had in the past.
"My lord," Rubicante said with a bow. "How may we serve you again?"
"This giant has a pest problem," Golbez informed his servants, pointing toward the door. "Destroy them."
Kain watched the four Archfiends bow curtly and leave, and didn't even flinch as Barbariccia reached out and cupped his chin affectionately with thumb and forefinger as she walked past, purring, "Hello again, love."
0-0-0-0-0
The Archfiend of Wind was waiting on a platform for the party of five to come to her. Barbariccia was as beautiful as she was fearsome, and sat on a railing with one leg crossed over the other as she watched them climb the stairs to her perch.
Rydia saw what she was guarding—the panel that controlled the platform—and stared warily at the fiend.
Barbariccia seemed to know exactly what Rydia had been thinking. "You will not descend to the core," the fiend sneered, hopping up as light as a feather.
Her golden hair curled and twisted around her like a living thing, touching the floor, but not dragging. She had all the majesty of an Eidolon, but she had fallen, somehow. She had become a slave to an evil master and it radiated from her demeanor like an odorous perfume.
"Your journey ends here," the fiend said soundly, spreading out her arms and unfurling her hair as she summoned wind from every corner of the room. Rydia was drawn forward to her toes as a brisk draft hit her back, and everyone else squinted as the winds swirled more fiercely around them, tearing at their clothes and hair.
"She's forming a cyclone!" Cecil pointed out, shouting over the sound of the wind.
Rosa ducked behind the paladin and Rydia reached out for the closest railing to keep from being swept from her feet.
In the absence of her own magic, Rosa nocked an arrow to her bowstring and took aim. The cyclone played games with the fletching and sent the arrow wild, sending it flying back the opposite direction where it skimmed over Edge's shoulder.
"Projectiles won't work against her!" Edge said angrily, drawing only one of his katanas and holding his ground.
"You're best to stay in the reserve," FuSoYa told Rosa, and then nodded to Rydia. "Let the Summoner keep this wind spirit on her toes."
Rydia gave the Lunarian a plaintive look and frowned at the Archfiend whose tangled hair was flowing around her like a terrible tornado.
"How did you defeat her last time?" Edge asked.
"Last time we had Kain," Cecil replied.
There was a pause as Edge turned to stare at the paladin in disbelief. "Kain was useful?" Edge quipped.
"The dragoon can't help you now!" Barbariccia taunted, and cast a spell that took their feet out from under them and pinned them to the floor, sapping them of strength.
"Maelstrom," FuSoYa complained, prying himself up enough to speak the words of Curaja on the five of them.
Rydia listened to him chant the incantation, noticing the subtleties between his and Rosa's magic. Despite having known some of its spells as a child, white magic baffled her, and FuSoYa's incantation held a certain exactness that even Rosa's did not have; like a skilled mender asking sharply for tools precisely when he needed them.
Rydia stood up, but found herself the target of Barbariccia's fist that had emerged out of the cyclone and struck her hard across the jaw. She stumbled to the side, and her cheek burned from the force of it as she tasted blood in her mouth. It alarmed her more that her feet had become suddenly leaden. Had Barbariccia cast a spell she hadn't heard? Rydia glanced down and saw a pair of stone boots that resembled her own, and yelped as she had to duck at the waist to dodge another attack because she was rooted to the floor.
The others moved around her, doing their best to avoid Barbariccia's wrath, and FuSoYa chanted the spell that undid her petrification, allowing her to move again. It was Edge who first went on the offensive while the others hung back, flickering in a haze of light, and reappearing again at the Fiend's back. If Rydia had blinked she would have missed it, but she hadn't, and neither had Barbariccia. The Fiend took delight in chasing after the ninja as he ran and leapt along the platform and the scaffolding around it. She lashed out at him with tendrils of her hair, like golden whips, but he hopped away each time, barely ahead of her. Edge's luck was not to last long. Barbariccia was a fiend of the air, and the winds did her bidding, not his. She snared him as he landed, catching him by the foot with a tendril of her hair and hauling him from his feet with a triumphant snarl.
Edge curled into himself, and rolled when he hit the floor, coming to a stop at a metal post with a loud grunt.
"Your attacks are useless!" she laughed. "Not even the swiftest among you can get past my cyclone!"
Rydia glanced in Edge's direction, and saw him rise, though blood was pattering to the grated floor from a gash on his forehead. Despite it, his eyes were fiercely aimed in the Archfiend's direction.
If Edge couldn't find an opening, how were the rest of them supposed to?
Rydia chanted regardless, staring intently at the cyclone as it churned an erratic path along the platform. Rydia had to run as she chanted, avoiding Barbariccia's gusts of wind until she had spoken her spell to completion. Thundaga blazed out of the air, flashing into the Fiend's tornado, but it didn't hit her directly. Instead it was swept up into the cyclone, sizzling on the wind and lashing out again with tendrils of sparks. Rydia had to dodge her own spell as it rebounded.
"You must strike the eye of her storm!" FuSoYa advised, and cast thundaga directly at the fiend, pouring the spell straight down the center of the funnel. Rydia watched in amazement as Barbariccia's figure was illuminated in silhouette against her own wind as she screamed in outrage.
Barbariccia spun again, uncoiling her funnel at them with the force of a gale. It struck them all down, pinning them against the platform railings.
FuSoYa continuously chanted, healing their wounds, but finally pulled a hapless Rosa aside. "This phrase," he said, and spoke a brief series of words to her in Lunarian. "Every time you begin your spells, replace the first phrase with the one I've just taught you," he advised.
Rosa repeated the phrase uncertainly, testing it out.
"Remember," he said. "At the beginning of each incantation."
The white mage nodded numbly.
"And place emphasis on every second syllable, not third," he said, keeping his eye on Barbariccia. "Keep your voice even, don't embellish," the Lunarian went on.
Rydia began an incantation of her own, trying to focus on the fiend within the cyclone, but Barbariccia preempted her, launching out of a spin with a kick that struck hard. Rydia crouched in pain, nursing her arm, and heard Rosa chant to heal her. FuSoYa coached the white mage through the spell, but when it was completed, Rydia didn't feel healing—instead she felt one of her bones break at the point of impact. She screamed in pain with tears flowing from her eyes, and it was FuSoYa who had to heal her instead.
"I said second, not third!" the Lunarian scolded. Rosa was mortified, and Rydia couldn't help but forgive her—she knew firsthand the difficulty of learning the Lunarian words.
Rosa tried again with a simpler spell, attempting to heal Edge's injuries as Barb took great pleasure in fighting hand to hand with the ninja. The spells were little more than palliative, and Edge glanced at her, unimpressed.
"You mustn't just say the words!" FuSoYa shouted out to her. "You must say them with conviction!" he said as he conjured another Thundaga spell into existence onto the Fiend.
Rydia dodged another counterattack from Barbariccia, and thought up a different strategy. If Cecil and Edge couldn't strike her, and if hitting her with magic was difficult at best; the only choice left was to destroy her cyclone altogether. A name rose to her lips, and she began a very familiar summoning, a song she had known since childhood—Mist's.
The summoning circle surrounded her, and Mist's long, sinuous body flew into the room with her wings unfurled. She alighted on the platform and stretched her neck to gaze down upon the Archfiend.
Barbariccia hurled scythe-like winds at the Eidolon, but Mist merely beat her wings and shredded the gusts to gentle drafts, regarding the other with cold gray eyes.
"Fiend of the Air, my Mist will reduce your howling winds to mere gasps," Mist decreed.
"I don't believe we've met, Guardian of the Veil," Barbariccia said boldly from within her sanctuary of wind. "A shame that we find ourselves in opposition, but such is our station in life—to answer to the whims of another."
Barbariccia caused her twister to swirl toward the dragon, but Mist rose into the air above it and flicked her tail, sending an eddy of air swirling in the opposite direction, neutralizing it. The dragon rose higher, raising her head to take in a deep breath just before she unleashed a stream of mist that, when it encountered Barbariccia's cyclone, spiraled into it, and wreaked havoc on the gusts until they were too heavy for the Archfiend to churn and manipulate. The tornado fell apart, stray gusts being torn to shreds by the dragon's mist. Barbariccia was revealed at last, glaring at the Eidolon with a look of death.
"Traitor," Barbariccia accused haughtily.
"Foundling," Mist returned calmly.
Barbariccia meant to collect the winds to herself again, but Rydia noticed a quick movement from the corner of her eye.
Cecil had thrown something to Edge, and in the span of a breath, the beautiful sword that Cecil had been given was soaring through the air, and struck the distracted fiend in the stomach.
Barbariccia clutched the weapon in disbelief, staring at the humans with menace. Ichor bled from her wound, and the Fiend stumbled, staring from the humans to the blade in shock. The magic that bound her into existence began to uncoil, unraveling her form like sand being blown by the wind. "Not again!" she wailed, just before even her golden hair was nothing more than scattered golden dust.
"Rydia, there is one other," Mist warned, setting down on the platform once more and fixing her summoner with a look. "There is someone you might call to your aid to stamp out the archfiend's flames. Please remember him," she advised, before Rydia released her to the Feymarch.
Cecil walked forward to retrieve his blade, now lying on the platform floor, and sheathed it.
"Is everyone alright?" he asked, looking them over.
FuSoYa glared at Rosa. "No thanks to your white mage," he said. "Keep your phrasing in mind," he repeated. "Think through what you're going to do before you begin, and remember that you are replacing, not adding. Stop leaning upon your old incantations—they are unreliable and redundant."
"Your words are strange," Rosa said angrily.
"My language is the language of the Crystals," he objected. "Yours is the language that is strange. I cannot believe my brother bothered to teach you humans our ways, seeing what you've done with our knowledge."
"You will not insult the members of this party," Cecil said with annoyance, stepping into the conversation. "We are doing the best that we can."
"Your best may not be good enough," FuSoYa said, as he activated the platform and they descended into the intricate core that controlled the giant.
0-0-0-0-0
When the platform stopped, they stepped off of it into a broad antechamber. Behind it, a large dome had been built, lined with pipes and wires and tubes that all connected somehow to an enormous orb in its center. Everything had the look of polished obsidian, and the five of them stared at it, amazed. Or at least four of them did.
"That's what we've come for," FuSoYa said gravely. "But first, we must get to it, and I presume it will not be simply done."
"Rubicante," Edge snarled, preparing his swords.
"That was disappointingly quick," the Archfiend replied sourly, materializing out of a haze of heat before them.
It was so entirely unexpected, that they jumped back from his presence.
"Impressive," The Fiend of fire said calmly, sparking a trench of flames from his finger tips that spread the full length of the antechamber. "You've come this far, but this is where your journey ends," he told them with a sneer. "Master Zemus will reduce this planet to bedrock, to a blank slate, so that a new civilization can begin."
"Your master can burn in Hell," Edge snapped.
Rubicante laughed, drawing his cloak tightly around himself. "You will not disrupt this machine so long as I stand guard."
"Then you will be destroyed with your master, Archfiend," Cecil threatened, drawing his sword and lifting his shield.
"You're welcome to try. Please," Rubicante beckoned, holding out one hand while his flames heated the chamber to an inferno. "Make this battle worth my talents."
0-0-0-0
Golbez had been absent for hours, integrated into the Giant's systems by a network of wires in a small chamber. Kain felt the giant's movements as Golbez directed them; saw what the giant saw through Golbez' eyes.
And then came a moment when alarms clanged in Kain's head like a percussive symphony, as if there was a warning system installed inside his skull that reverberated against every thought and impulse and overwhelmed him with information. It had been bad enough when Kain had sensed the fall of the Archfiends through Golbez' mind, but this was far worse. The chamber that had granted Golbez exclusive access to the Giant's systems suddenly evicted him, disconnecting him from the machine's "brain" as every system of the giant shut down through a series of failures.
"No—No!" Golbez shouted, as he stumbled to the control panel that was blinking and flickering as its power source began to fail. The giant began to lurch, and then went still.
Rage!
The emotion burned through Kain like a fever, though it was not his own.
Kain stood silently as Golbez stalked past him and out of the control room that was flashing with warnings, just before all of the consoles went blank and lifeless. The Central Processing Unit had been destroyed, and in some flicker of the chaos that was Golbez' thoughts, Kain understood that it had been Cecil who had orchestrated it.
Kain waited for his master's commands, but he was not summoned. He was expendable, after all. Golbez had other things on his mind, and Kain's death in a self-destructing juggernaut was the least of his concerns.
Minutes drew out and the giant began to groan. And in the midst of this, a woman's monotone voice began to sound out through its interior with notices at regular intervals. The natural response would be to flee—to escape—but Golbez had elected revenge over self-preservation, and he had sought out the saboteurs of his plans in order to destroy them utterly.
Flashes of information splayed across Kain's mind.
Cecil. Rosa. They were alive, and not only were they alive, but the others were with them as well. And a man.
Kain sensed a searing hatred for this man through his link to Golbez. This man was a Lunarian. A meddling fool whose scope of grandeur was so limited, he would rather hide in a rabbit hole than shape the destiny of lesser beings.
There was a moment of intense emotion and struggle, and suddenly Kain felt disconnected from the entire experience. He felt sane. He blinked and looked around the control room with his own eyes.
His link to Golbez had been…severed?
He wavered under his own power and stumbled across the room. He was no longer bound by Golbez' control, but they were still connected, he discovered, as concerns flitted through the other man's mind.
Self-destruct. Escape hatch. Retreat. Kain saw its location, almost as if he had been given a map. The transporter that had brought the two of them here was connected to the control room by a simple lift.
But to escape on his own meant abandoning the others. Kain knew that a world in which he had survived and Cecil had not, was one he could never show his face. He had to warn them—if Golbez hadn't already killed them.
Kain stumbled onto the lift, and was amazed that it operated for him. Was it Golbez' presence in his mind that had allowed it? These systems were strange.
The lift went upwards, past the transporter, past the secondary cooling units, and finally to the housing chamber for the CPU itself. The lift had barely stopped moving, when a calamity of thoughts seared through Golbez, and thus, through Kain as well.
A great darkness was lifted, and in its place, memories came rushing back like an ocean that had been returned to its bed.
Kain collapsed, his mind overwhelmed, as images of another life superseded his own memories.
KluYa…Cecilia…
Names from years past—parents perhaps.
A village.
Kain sensed that Golbez knew this place. This had been a home to him once.
Theodor.
A name that had once been held with esteem. A name that had once belonged to an innocent young boy.
Betrayal.
People had abused the teachings of magic. They had murdered his father.
Abandoned.
His mother had died on the birthing bed, leaving him alone with a brother.
Claimed.
By a voice who seemed to know him, who felt his anger, who encouraged his rage.
And with a name that seemed to call out through time—Golbez—Kain snapped to his senses again, retching on the cold floor on his hands and knees.
He didn't understand what it meant. He didn't know why he had been shown these images, but he felt as lost, as hopeless, and as angry as the little boy Theodor. Had that been Golbez once before he had been turned?
Had the two of them really been so lost, that they had been lured by the first voice that had promised them a place to belong?
Kain mastered his stomach, and controlled his breathing. Who was it that had engineered their hatred to bring the both of them here? Who was responsible for the slaughter of so many innocents?
Kain crawled out of the lift and stumbled behind the panel that operated it. He had to pause—he was too dizzy to continue—and heard two sets of feet hurry past him and into the lift he had just vacated.
Another minute went by. More warnings chimed from the monotone woman's voice and the Giant groaned as its joints and pistons settled.
Kain shoved himself back to his feet, clarity helping to propel his footsteps. Golbez' thoughts had fled his mind. The doubts and fear and hatred had all receded. It was like poison had been drawn out of him. For the first time in months—years—Kain finally felt free.
He ran across the walkway and through the open doorway into the CPU's chamber. It was a mess. Wires and pipes dangled and sparked; a noxious gas had begun to fill the space, and the entire dome wreaked of fried circuits.
"We need to get out of here!" Edge's voice cut through the madness of the smoke and noise.
Kain followed the sound, hopping over large portions of damaged machinery.
"How?" Rydia demanded shrilly, sounding hoarse and panicked.
"This way!" Kain called out to them, finally coming close enough to see all of them in the room that was filling with spilled coolant.
"Kain!" Rosa cried out, clutching onto Cecil with bloodied knuckles. He couldn't tell if she was glad or bereaved to see him.
"We've fallen for enough of your tricks," Edge snarled, holding onto both swords like they were his only link to reality.
Kain looked over them briefly, noticing how ragged and defeated they looked. Truth be told, he probably didn't look much better.
"We can talk later!" he said briskly. "But if you want to live, you'd best follow me now!"
They stared at him dumbly for a minute, until another tremor shook the Giant as if to emphasize his words.
He gestured at them to follow him, and turned to leave. They could forgive him or put him out of his misery. He really didn't care.
So long as they all lived long enough for him to find out…
0-0-0-0-0
A/N:
Griffon. Really, Myth, Really? Please let someone else be in charge of naming your real life children. Okay. So the reason behind the name (and the spelling) has to do with things to come in later stories. I'm mostly using this name because of a nickname, and other reasons and…*insert more blather here*
And also…REALLY, MYTH? You introduce a new character HERE? You're insane. You crazy crazy mythweaver.
Holy Kain, batman! You may have noticed that Kain got screen time! Wuuuuuuut. Contrary to popular belief, I DO actually love Kain. Of the characters in this game, Edge, Rydia, and Kain top my list. And yes, of course, I love to make fun of him because…let's be real. His character was set up that way…it's hard to avoid.
I included an entire sub-thread for him because I wanted a reason to explain how the tower's shield shuts down, why Golbez is conveniently INSIDE the giant, and why Kain also is conveniently inside the Giant…. The whole juxtaposition of these events in the game is just…haha. Why, SE…why…I will wait until just AFTER you've blown up my giant to come yell at you! BLAH. BLAH. BLAH. Oh, hi Kain.
Meta. So much of it. Here a meta, there a meta, everywhere a meta meta. Please don't chase me with pitchforks…I'm too tired and broken for that level of exercise….
THE ARCHFIENDS. These four were an utter utter pain in my backside to write. I changed Scarmiglione's depiction because I wanted to do something different with him for once. In fact…if I think about it, there was something else I wanted to do during his battle, but for the sake of OMG this chapter is huge and already taking forever, I cut it shorter.
Rubicante….Um. It occurred to me that during the writing of this entire saga that I had already written Rubicante but had NEVER written the other three. The thought of having to write his battle scene….AGAIN was just so…redundant that I decided to cut him out. We all know the party kills him. Again. And we ALL know the party kills the CPU. But…honestly, the reason why I chopped out the CPU was because…an orb? AN ORB. How in the world was I supposed to make that battle interesting. Sorry, guys. I SUPPOSE it could have been done, but you already had about 8765765 battles already in this chapter and…just…no. If you're really disappointed, just go re-play that whole scene, lol. Or play it on the DS and then scream with rage because of how ridiculously STRONG they made the attack node…
Edge and Rydia…..are REALLY going at it, this chapter. Yes, Edge is being a whiny little jerk face who can't make up his mind…and yes, Rydia went on a bit of a god-complex in this chapter, haha. There's more for these two in the next chapter that I'm REALLY excited to write.
Cecil and Rosa kind of got shafted in this chapter. Especially Rosa. Who…I realized about 3/4 of the way through this chapter, that I had neglected for a bit too long. This resulted in a very loud and dramatic RAGE QUIT some nights back when I realized I had to write her back IN to the chapter and do so in a way that didn't make me want to kill off her character.
Speaking of killing off characters…quite a number of them did not fare well in this chapter…
The construction of the Giant itself really really bothers me. First of all…who puts a CPU in a juggernaut's STOMACH. Why not it's…I dunno…BRAIN? Cue more raving and ranting and angry keyboard smashing while figuring all of THAT out.
This, of course, is not including the parts where I had to figure out what Kain DID every day in the Tower of Babil. The only things we were able to conclude is that he brushes his hair a lot…and polishes his armor. So THAT took about two weeks of brainstorming…and of course, none of it got used (story of my life).
And lastly but most importantly…Thank you THANK YOU to my readers and reviewers. Sorry for going completely MIA on all of you for about, oh, four months, there.
Thank you for sticking around and not giving up hope…..because I'll be honest and say there were days when I almost did, lol.
I'm also glad to report that I have FINALLY finished this chapter JUST before the fandom world's scheduled collapse. I will be hanging out with Moonclaw this upcoming week, and you can bet there will be a sudden influx of new ideas and stories emerging on this back stretch of summer.
And of course….the long, long awaited final chapters of this story ;)
Until next time!
~Myth
