29

The velocycle sped through the skies of Gran Pulse, as if it were aiming to defy the logistics of acceleration. With the landscape below passing by in a blur, Sazh's qualms got the better of him as he glanced to the driver's seat.

"'Kicked it up a notch'?" he said.

"Really, it's nothing to worry about," the burly man assured him, "A few minor adjustments, some piston check-ups, maybe a pinch of magic..."

At the foot of the backseat, Bhakti issued an admonishing twitter, though Sazh waved away any further disapproval. "As long as this thing stays in the air," he sighed, shoving remnant misgivings aside while reviewing the hand-held screen that tracked their pursuit of the rampaging fal'Cie. As of the last few miles, the pilot suspected where the entity was heading, but the erratic nature of Asura's previous paths of destruction muddled the certainty of his deductions.

"You think the Menhirrim are closing in on it?" he asked Snow. Within seconds of Asura's retreat, the leonine statues had extended their influence to the floodwaters, commanding the deluge to flush the fal'Cie out of her latest burrow and into open ground.

"Let's hope so," Snow replied, bristling as one of many nelapsi they had encountered so far swooped down towards the vehicle, "We just need to stay one step ahead of this thing-"

Suffering the wrath of the Total Eclipses, the nelapsi spiralled to its doom before it could leave a mark on the hood of the vehicle. "You were saying?" Sazh said, on the lookout for any more interruptions. The burly man simply offered a grim laugh and looked towards their encroaching destination.

Knowing that Lebreau, Gadot, Maqui, Yuj and the strike force under their jurisdiction were well on their way to rejoining Bartholomew and his wards at the Massif encampment alleviated his concern for them. By that extent, it was no stretch of imagination for Sazh to sense that the security of the team's welfare fortified Snow's will to go beyond the power and fate in his grasp, and bring the entirety of his family together, once and for all.


Crystal slivers skittered along the steep angle of the tunnel, hounding the rumbling quake's steady progression from the lower reaches of the pillar. Jumping up to another precarious ledge, Lightning scoffed at the echoing cowardice of the Cie'th. The forsaken souls would be stampeding, crushing and tripping over formerly cohesive hunting parties and taking pains to mob any of the smaller variations that tried to dart to safety. Stripped of the stability necessary to maintain composure, the fiends would bow to infectious panic and lash out against their mindless torment, even if it should bring them to desecrate the structure that had sheltered them.

The unending cacophony was not the root of the annoyance scraping along the back of her mind, but it made no effort to abate it as she continued to negotiate the alternating tracts of glassy and coarse walkways. Rather, her irritation stemmed from the prevalence of pale, shifting rays dripping across the cavern's surfaces. Memories of the Narthex tried to impede her concentration on the tremor's movement along the column; judging the dispersing force would assist her in determining how far she was from the hollows that led into the chamber. Lightning exhaled prior to persisting, as though to wash away the recollection of the stale atmosphere.

Having come this far, she would not allow something as trivial as reflective light deter her. Illuminated tricks would not obscure the shadows of the tunnels for long. Just as certain, if the need arose, she would carve her own path to the chamber. By no particular prompt, she pondered the Oerban's responses to the nuisance with a wry tone. Doubtlessly, Vanille would outshine her surroundings, while Fang would forage onward, ever stubborn-

She nearly paused at the thought, a smirk tugging at her lips as the sentiment behind the distraction burned brighter, goading her to turn back.

"Nice try," she said, threads of long-ago banter revisiting her mind, "But this is one talk you're not going to miss out on."


The diverse cloud of penanggalan and nelapsi streamed out from the fissure, flailing teeth and limbs in the struggle to put as many miles between themselves and the pillar as possible. Unseen by the flock, the trio of adolescents continued to clamber up the serrated tiers leading up to the starburst shell of the chamber.

"Almost there!" Vanille shouted from her perch atop a horizontally jutting spike. Having been the first to be reeled up to the tier, courteously of the binding rod wires, Serah peered down and observed Hope's progress.

"Looks like all of Light's hard work is paying off," the amiable Oerban commented casually.

Serah cast her an amused look, "You don't say?"

"He used to tire out far too quickly," Vanille explained, leaning over with a conspiratorial whisper before pulling Hope up the rest of the way, "Still all skin and bones, though."

Brushing crystal dust from his knees, the silver-haired teen scanned the shell for any signs of an entryway. "What's our best bet?" he asked Vanille.

His friend tapped her chin, sauntering closer to the foundation of the spine. "Coming from above won't work, but we could try going around that side... Am I the only one hearing all this racket?" Sourly, she put her hands on her hips, so lost in thought that she did not notice Hope and Serah whip around to take in an incoming, roaring silhouette.

A call sounded out to her, causing the amiable Oerban to pivot on her heels and gasp, seeing a dream unfold into reality.

"Sazh! Over here!" she cried, waving her arms while the velocycle's occupants searched for a place to idle long enough to bring them aboard.

"Great to see you, too!" Snow yelled, the humour of his feigned offense overshadowed by the pilot's warning. Veering the vehicle away from the seeker Cie'th's gnashing jaws, the burly man endeavoured to catch a draft of air and stabilize the velocycle.

The trio glowered at the forsaken soul, "So much for staying in one place," Serah lamented. At this, inspiration took to Hope's mind as he weighed the Hawkeye in his hand, formulating a plan.

"Can you give me a hand with this one?" he asked the younger Farron, harvesting the slight, though potent aura of renewed magic. As soon as he received her affirmation, Hope cast the glimmering spell over the boomerang and hurled it towards the Cie'th; acquiring a glint of silver from Serah, the weapon smashed into the fiend's gut.

With the combined spells dazing the seeker and suspending it in mid-flight, Vanille hooked the wires of the binding rod onto the fiend. "Time to fly!" she announced, waiting for her friends to anchor one hand to the hilt of the weapon and loop their free arms around her waist before they took a running leap off the tier.

Vanille cheered, for she had almost forgotten how exhilarating it was to dive from towering heights. Hope and Serah screamed, for the drop was sheer.

Speeding towards them, Snow arranged the vehicle so that its open side was facing the trio as they swung towards them. Effortlessly, he caught his fiancée with one arm; behind them, Sazh nearly toppled out of his seat as Vanille and Hope slammed into him.

"Nothing to it," Snow chuckled, summoning a weary laugh from Serah as he pulled the velocycle away from the pillar's base, allowing the backseat trio to sort themselves out of their present state of discomfort. Once she and the silver-haired teen were buckled in, the amiable Oerban succeeded in giving Sazh a fierce hug.

"Still keeping it together?" she teased, resting her head on his shoulder. With an arm around her torso, the pilot brushed away the initial traces of overwhelmed joy from his eyes, "Wouldn't want to disappoint," he replied, gesturing to a happily whistling individual at their feet.

"Bhakti!" Vanille beamed, setting the robot on her lap while he purred in contentment at the return of his mistress. "Aren't you looking wonderful," the amiable Oerban said, admiring his array of upgrades before turning to Sazh, "I guess you've made a habit out of fixing him?"

"All I did was bring him home," Sazh told her, "Hope's the one who spruced him up."

The silver-haired teen's strangled cough in the wake of the subsequent embrace was short-lived as Serah and Snow returned their focus to the column.

"Light went after Fang," the younger Farron informed her fiancé, "Vanille said there could be a way in, around the other side."

In tandem to their exchange, Sazh noticed several irregularities that had sprung up on the hand-held screen. The amount of interference consumed the tracking signals, yet first and foremost on the pilot's mind was the safety of his unaccounted-for family members.

Sazh looked to Snow, "You sure it can support all this?" he inquired, considering the strength of the tiers in proportion to the mass of the vehicle.

Snow gestured to the binding rod, "We could try swinging by-"

"Look out!"

Hope's exclamation gave them enough warning to haul back as a bolt of searing energy shot up from the ground, its resulting shockwave colliding with the pillar. The lightest plink of crumbling Cie'th corpses responded while the rest of the column stood, unaffected and defiant.

Boulders and uprooted foliage had been tossed asunder by the strike, ringing the frothing rush of a chaotic, grimy geyser. Manipulating the flood, Asura circled the foot of the structure, the blazing energy coursing through her form evaporating the residual water from her scales. With gaping jaws, she tasted the currents of air carrying the exhaust fumes of the velocycle's engine and rotated her head, as if to bend with the gales. Instantaneously her head snapped down, the tip of her corroded, mesh beak resting on the underside of her neck.

The mockery of surrender dissolved when the crystal scabs covering the stumps of the fal'Cie's fin joints twitched violently, emitting coils of smoke while the scales nearest to them fanned out erratically. Twin torrents of energy shot out from Asura's flanks, scarring the land with a pair of scorched gorges as the nature of the fins was revealed.

Molten scales hardened over the necks of the two lesser facets as they slunk out from either side of the fal'Cie, shrilly agonizing over the amputation of the crests upon their scalps. Dragging the end of her barbed tail back and forth across the pool gushing at the foot of the column, Asura raised her head towards the glow of the structure's core, the duplicate heads copying her movement with marionette grace.

The howls of the lesser facets mimicked a symphony of tortured ghouls as Asura coiled around the pillar and commenced her ascent.