Final Fantasy IV The After Years: The Novel

by Celes Chere

17 years after Final Fantasy IV, Ceodore Harvey departs Baron to earn his spot in the elite air force, the Red Wings. In the days that follow, the world falls to crisis, with a mysterious figure gathering the crystals once more and the ominous return of the second moon. This time, there may be no homecoming. A novelization based off of the iOS version of Final Fantasy IV TAY.

37. Act Thirty-Seven: The Final Tale

Act Thirty-Seven: The Final Tale | Somnus

"Ceodore!" Cecil screamed, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Where are you!?" It felt like the hundredth time he had shouted his son's name in the span of minutes – his throat was becoming raw, and he could taste the spray of blood droplets on his tongue – but even so, he pushed himself forward, calling out over and over again.

Ceodore…please, answer me! You have to be alive…WHERE ARE YOU?!

They were tearing through a winding white glass path that erupted in a riot of colors as they stepped over each tile – pinks, purples, blues, greens, yellows – towering stalks of crystal branching over their heads in a makeshift arch that spanned in glistening layers far into the horizon. The surrounding sky was pitch-black, same as the crystal graveyard – but Cecil could see satellites of light glimmering tantalizingly in the distance, and the path lights at their feet were bright enough to keep themselves from tumbling over a ledge.

Edge had sprinted ahead, climbing up the crystal arches and running above the others so that he could get an aerial view of their surroundings. With a final leap, he soared back to the ground, tumbling to a stop near a transparent glass staircase that stretched to the heavens. At the foot of the stairs, and on a few of the ascending steps, he spotted specks of blood – still glossy and wet.

"Over here!" Edge called behind him to no one in particular, blanching as he swiped some of the blood with his fingers and brought it to his nose to take a sniff. Ugh, yes – definitely fresh.

Kain was the first to arrive, his eyes immediately darting to the blood before Edge could say anything.

"This doesn't look good."

"Yeah, Captain Obvious," Edge deadpanned. "I knew we shouldn't have left Ceodore or the crystals with Golbez."

"You honestly think Golbez was behind this?" Kain rested a hand on his hip. "Wouldn't he have taken the crystals along on his little heist if he had any grand plans to screw us over?"

"I don't know!" Edge snapped. "I…Argh, I should have said something! Or stayed behind! It just didn't smell right!"

"Well, you didn't," Kain glared, even though he was thinking the same exact thing – wasn't there something they could have done to prevent this? "So, shut up already."

"I don't want to hear anything from you!" Edge hissed. "You're still on my list for all the backstabbing stunts you've pulled – so don't act like you're any better than Golbez!" Kain's jaw dropped, and Edge responded with a double-fisted one-finger salute.

"Stop it, both of you!" Rydia gasped, panting for breath as she barreled up to them. "I could hear you arguing my entire way here! If either of you do anything to make this worse for Cecil or Rosa…I will never forgive you!" She then noticed the blood spill behind Edge and felt her knees buckle, the fiery energy behind her threat rushing out of her like a punch to the gut.

"Oh, no…"

"Ceodore!" Rosa's voice drifted over to them, fragile as china. "Golbez…!"

Rydia shook her head, snapping back to her old self and turning her attention back to the two men. "I mean it – no more fighting!" She proceeded up the stairs, glaring at them once more for good measure over her shoulder. "I'm going to check things out up here."

"Sorry," Edge muttered, and Kain rolled his eyes, turning away. And thus, another temporary truce was begrudgingly born – about seventeen years too late, it seemed.

A little while later, both Rosa and Cecil made their way to the foot of the stairs, with nothing to show for their search except shortened breath and bloodshot eyes from taking no breaks to blink. Rosa shrieked when Kain pointed out the blood, tears streaking down her cheeks, and Cecil felt like he was spinning in place – his mind wouldn't stop churning out every possible nightmare scenario they could be walking into, each more terrifying than the last.

A scream erupted from the top of the stairs, startling the four of them out of their self-pitying stupor.

"That's Rydia," Edge gasped, turning to gallop his way up the landing. Cecil, Rosa and Kain followed close behind, never letting up on their pace even as their collective knees ached in protest.

After several minutes of climbing, gasping, and wheezing, they finally reached the top, arriving on another level of light-up floors that were sporadically damaged and cracked from green and silver plant-like metallic orbs that were shooting up from the tiles. Some were only as tall as Cecil's knee, while others towered over Kain. The lights that Cecil had spotted from below were floating all around them on rectangular mechanical wreckage – they appeared to be sheets of steel that were bolted together carelessly and unevenly, more of the odd green and silver orbs springing from the tops where the lights were installed.

Ahead of them, Rydia was collapsed on her knees, staring in horror at what was hovering between the remainder of the light boxes and the ledge of the very sudden drop-off in the floor. A grotesque mass of cobalt blue tentacles was writhing out of a floating island of alloy and wire, some of them perforated with rows of holes that ejected steam in clockwork bursts, some others twisted together and ribbed until they came to a sharpened point, and others that appeared to be in the process of splitting in two – they started off thick and course at the base of the mass, eventually branching off into slender, twitching weaves that were drenched with oil and the gods knew what else trailing between the separate ends in a giant, sloping trail of mucous.

In the center of the mass, a pulsing ladder of blue lights rested, coils of tentacles and wires weaving in the spaces between each light. And hanging in mid-air on each side of the ladder, entangled in a slimy feeler that was pulsing with blinking red lights that moved in time with the central mass, were Ceodore and Golbez. Both of them were passed out – heads slumped forward and bodies unmoving with the exception of the occasional muscular twitch of the respective feeler that held them captive.

"Oh, my gods," the blood drained from Cecil's face as he rushed to the ledge to get a closer look. Rosa clasped her hands to her mouth, stunned into silence, and Kain and Edge both kneeled before Rydia, urging her to get back up all the while their eyes glued to the abomination before them. Up close, Cecil could hear the bizarre mix of scraping metal and sickening sucking noises as the tentacles slithered about, and desperately called out to Ceodore, who was hanging directly out of reach above him. The boy didn't stir – his white face remained expressionless as the tentacle suddenly changed course and yanked him further out of the way, his limbs swinging carelessly like a marionette's.

"The eidolons…" Rydia squeezed her eyes shut as Kain and Edge hauled her to her feet, gasping for breath. "…They are warning us!"

"Well of course! L-Look at that thing! It's huge!" Edge gulped.

"What is this?" Rosa whimpered. "What is it doing with Ceodore and Golbez?"

Kain shook his head. "There's got to be a way to cut them down."

"Maybe there's something inside!" Cecil cried. He withdrew his sword, pointing toward the vulnerable pockets in the center of the ladder where the wires were feeding through. "If we can get in…maybe we can find a way to force it to release them."

"I can help with that," Edge winked as he reached for his belt. "Nothing some exploding shurikens can't fix."

"Be careful, I beg of you," Rosa whimpered. "One wrong move, and they'll fall into the depths and be lost forever!"

"Don't worry," Edge retrieved a set of three stars, fanning them between his fingers and gritting his teeth as he took aim. "I throw these at Tsukinowa's head all the time, and as you can see – he's still in one piece."

Cecil ducked out of the way and Rosa covered her eyes as Edge tossed the stars, each one embedding into the ladder in the shape of a perfect triangle. A series of warning beeps jingled before they exploded, sending shrapnel and busted wires everywhere and exposing a gaping pit with dozens of pale pink, miniature tentacles twitching along the perimeter angrily. Cecil heard a nauseating pop and a hiss, the mini tentacles excreting a thin white film that stretched over the vulnerable opening and promptly sealed it back up.

"What…the hell!?" Edge balked. "It's got a self-defense system?"

"We have to kill the tentacles inside," Cecil ordered. "Once those are gone – no more shield!"

"Let me try," Rydia frowned, stepping forward and raising her hand. "Firaga!"

A cluster of flames ran up the perimeter of the film, gathering in its center and cumulating in an explosion that nearly rocked the tentacle ball off its axis. Rosa gasped behind her hand as both Ceodore and Golbez were throttled about violently – however, the tentacles held firm, and neither of them slipped away. Peering through the smoke that was barreling out of the core, Cecil could see that all of the pink tentacles had been fried in the explosion, withered up into black scabs that now hung precariously from the entrance.

"That did it!" Cecil exclaimed. "Nice job, Rydia! Kain – give me a boost inside."

But as Kain made his approach, a series of chugging snaps and bangs echoed inside the darkened chamber, and the tentacles that had steam vents went berserk, shooting off massive clouds every few seconds that made Cecil's skin blister painfully as one swung precariously near his head, a rain of scalding droplets drizzling over him. He bid a hasty retreat, his eyes stinging from the sudden rush of heat, as a set of snaking, twisting wires shot out of the core, looping around each other in the darkness. Moments later, a figure encased in blinding platinum blue slithered out of the core, and it was revealed that the wires were attached directly to its shoulders and backside. The new arrival looked like a wax figurine that had been left too long near an open flame – their body was smooth and featureless, round, saggy jowls hanging down its hairless face that blended into rounded shoulders and two stumps for arms that contained no fingers or any other discernible digits. A lumpy chest expanded into a potbelly that hung over two more stumps that made up its legs. Two blinking, neon white eyes fastened themselves upon the party, and Cecil suddenly felt a throbbing ache in his skull as alien noises and clicks attacked his senses.

"It's trying to talk to me...directly into my mind!" he gasped, clutching his head. "It…it hurts!"

"I...I can hear something...!" Rosa covered her ears, wincing. "But I can't understand any of it!"

"Is this thing responsible for all of this madness?" Kain gaped.

"It's just staring at us…" Rydia muttered, averting her gaze. She didn't like the way it looked at her as if it could see the very depths of her soul – like it could start rattling off her deepest, darkest secrets the same way one recited the alphabet.

The creature tilted its head, reaching back to one of the wires jammed into its back and pulling it out with a loud "thwack" that resembled a boot being pulled out of the mud. It turned back to the party, blinking slowly three times with transparent eyelids. An epicene voice suddenly poured out of the strange metal orbs that were perched along the surrounding satellites, and Cecil and Rosa felt the pain in their heads gradually drain away to a hollow emptiness.

"Let me try this...to see if you can understand my words."

"Who are you?" Cecil asked tersely, raising one hand. "And what is all of this?"

The creature's eyes flicked back and forth, first glancing at Ceodore, and then Golbez, the voice rising out of the speakers once more. "I am the keeper of the crystals, and this moon is my home."

"Keeper of the crystals?" Rosa blinked. "As in the eight crystals on the Blue Planet and those of the Red Moon?"

The creature nodded. "Precisely so. You seem to see the crystals as embodiments of wisdom, but that is not their sole function. Certainly, the crystals have granted you the tools you needed to grow and advance as a civilization... But they are so much more than something as simple as that. Their true purpose is to record and store everything within... The process and final result of every evolution that ever takes place on your planet."

Cecil could have been knocked over by a stiff breeze as he stared at the creature in disbelief. It's saying that the crystals…relics that men have died for and waged war for centuries…relics that humans and Lunarians alike have strived to worship and protect for all this time…are nothing more than recording devices? Glorified planetary nannies?

This is insane!

Edge was thinking along the same lines as Cecil. "Every evolution…of what, exactly? How can crystals record data?"

"Evolution as it pertains to every living creature," it explained patiently. "Plants, animals, humans, even the planet itself – the crystals do not discriminate. They record data the same way you or I might – observation of repeatable patterns and deviations. For example, it was from the crystals that I learned about the unusual chemical reaction that occurs within this subject." The tentacle that clung to Ceodore jiggled garishly, causing everyone on the platform except for the strange creature to wince.

"Here we have a human male with an inconsequential fraction of Lunarian blood that can temporarily recode his own DNA to increase vitality – absolutely fascinating. I was getting anxious for your arrival and instead set a lure for him to come to me. It was simple to execute – for I also learned from the crystals that his Lunarian blood was susceptible to psychic impulses and replicated them to achieve my desired result."

"We just call that mind-control on our planet," Kain said dryly.

"That's an acceptable interpretation. As for the half-breed…" it nodded toward Golbez, "I wasn't expecting him to come along as well, but it would seem he wouldn't let the boy out of his sights. I made do."

Cecil drew a tempered breath, though the rage that was boiling in his chest was as powerful as a furnace. "You speak of them as if they're soulless objects. They're not science experiments – they're our friends and our family – they're human beings. I demand that you let them go!"

"Yeah – what is it you're after?" Edge huffed. "What do our crystals contain that is so special that you had to go and stir up all this trouble?"

"Would you understand if I told you that I am in the midst of an experiment involving the future evolution of life? That was the reason why I created the crystals in the first place. The crystals I sent to your planet are no exception – there is, in fact, nothing special about them at all. But now, the time has come to harvest them, as I have harvested many others across the galaxy – you might have noticed them in the previous chamber. I had sent a force of maenads to your planet and to the Red Moon to handle the duty."

"You mean those girls?" Rydia clenched her fist. "They were just doing your dirty work this entire time!?"

"The Maenads are my latest experiment, built from the data stored within my countless number of crystals. You should know this is not the first time they have visited the Blue Planet – it was many years ago that a prototype first made contact. The experiment was ultimately declared a failure – but she was still able to retrieve valuable data for me about your crystals, and eidolons. Eidolons, I realized, would be the key to the most efficient crystal extraction when it was time for the harvest. But it took me nearly sixteen years to perfect the current maenads based off that incomplete data."

"Sixteen years ago…" Edge growled. "I knew it – so Rydia's doppelgänger was one of your minions way back then! That was why she never actually stole the crystals – she was just gathering data about eidolons so you could learn how to manipulate them for yourself. And that's why these girls look like her, too – you modeled them after the only summoner in the world powerful enough to call all the eidolons you wanted, because that's the legacy that was recorded in the crystals."

"An acceptable summary of my efforts, yes."

"And that's why it felt the past has been repeating itself these past few days," Kain frowned. "The maenads were using our own planet's history against us to exploit our weaknesses and to best retrieve the crystals. That's how they knew to manipulate Baron."

"And our past enemies born from the crystals…" Rosa trailed off, clasping her hand to her mouth as the horror gradually dawned upon her. "…You revived them using data from the crystals…you dragged their very souls from the dead to occupy reanimated corpses."

Cecil closed the distance between himself and the keeper of the crystals, his heart sinking deeper into his stomach with each step as he found himself struggling to process all that was being laid out before them. At long last, the puzzle pieces were falling into place, but everything they were being told, he couldn't have imagined in even his darkest of nightmares.

Has every little thing I've known about life on our planet and our relationship with the crystals been a deception? My father…he believed in the future of this planet and its people…believed in the light of the crystals…believed that one day, that light would be what saved the Lunarians and would bring us together as one. Was that really all a lie…?

The crystals he held so much faith in…the light he gifted me to protect our world…it was all just part of a madman's experiment…did it really not mean anything at all?

He stared up at the creature's opaque eyes, jaw clenched. "If I'm understanding all of this, it means you've gotten everything you wanted – the crystals and all the information contained within for your experiments. If that's the case, why is this moon set to collide with our planet?"

A shockingly human sigh drifted over the speakers that had just the slightest tinge of emotion attached – regret?

"I am sorry to say this, but your time is over. I fear that you have not achieved enough on this planet to satisfy my needs. You see, I cannot allow the universe to be overrun by inferior species that fail to evolve to their fullest potential. Even these two beings, advanced as they may be, are inferior to other creatures I have studied the universe over." The writhing ball of tentacles, without ceremony, suddenly released Golbez and Ceodore, flinging them precariously over the ledge onto the floating platform with a hollow "thump" as their unconscious bodies bounced against the glass tiles. "Hence, the reason why this moon has not stopped..."

"Wh-what...!?" Cecil gasped, feeling as if all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the room – alarm bells were clanging in his ears, his vision flickering in and out with each labored beat of his heart. "You can't be serious!"

"You monster…!" Edge roared. "You're going to purposefully murder everyone on our planet just because we failed to evolve the way you wanted us to? You put us through hell and back, and you're still just going to wipe us out like it's nothing!?"

"P-please, wait...!" Rosa gasped, running to Ceodore and pulling his still body against her chest. "There has to be another way…! Why do innocent people have to die?"

The creature shook its head, holding up one stumpy arm as if to silence them. "You are all a part of the process...the output of the evolutionary plan conceived by the crystals I created. In other words, this is all my work... your lives, the crystals, the Maenads, and this new moon. This is why I am called the Creator!"

"NO!" Rydia shrieked, tossing her hand in the air as she began to glow with a shimmering yellow aura that rippled throughout the chamber like a star. "I won't let you – I won't let you use up the ones I love and toss us away like yesterday's trash!" She closed her eyes, a spiral of wind whipping her hair into a frenzy as she tossed her head back and screamed into the heavens. "Bahamut! I have need of your aid!"

"Rydia…wait!" Cecil shielded his face with his arms as the storm that had surrounded the summoner burst forth, the stinging gales nearly tossing him over the ledge. "We need the Creator to stop this moon…!"

His pleas went unheeded; dying in the wind. The gargantuan black dragon made his triumphant return, soaring over the tentacle pod and releasing an ear-shattering screech as he swooped over to Rydia's side. He bent his neck down, his wings stalled mid-air as she climbed on top of him and shimmied down his shoulders, pointing toward the direction of the Creator.

"This is the one that did all of this to us, Bahamut – finish him!"

The Creator stared up at Bahamut with dulled eyes as the dragon rose in the air, preparing his Mega Flare spell. Cecil stumbled away from the Creator just as a pair of tentacles stretched out from the pod, snatching at the air where he had only been standing seconds before and expelling a shower of the same sticky white film that had previously protected the core. He ran to Rosa and Ceodore, sliding to his knees and raising his shield to give cover. Edge and Kain shot each other a look before following suit with Golbez, heaving the sorcerer over their shoulders and dragging him away from Bahamut's crosshairs. With a final pump of his wings, Bahamut tossed his head back and spewed molten fire and popping flares over the ball of tentacles and the Creator, who unleashed a shriek that echoed maddeningly over and over on the surrounding speakers against the nonstop roar of the flames.

When the smoke finally cleared, half of the tentacles were limp and shriveled up on the core, scorched obsidian. Yet many more were still caught on fire, writhing angrily. The Creator had slumped into a puddle of glowing goo in the flame-riddled entrance of the pod, the wires that had been attached to its back now yanked free and twitching about like a pit of vipers as silver sparks flew from the ends.

"Is it over?" Edge winced, peeking out from beneath his cloak.

Bahamut disappeared in a swirl of crystals, Rydia gently gliding back down to the others on an air current born from his wings. But just as her feet touched the ground, the goo that had pooled where the Creator had been standing began to quiver and raise, molding into a new form. This time, instead of a misshapen blob, a svelte, androgynous human body emerged, platinum blue hair falling over its shoulders in soft waves that framed a pair of wide, penetrating blue eyes. A pair of transparent lips formed beneath a delicate slope of a nose. The naked figure stepped forward on fully-formed feet, raising its arms and summoning two of the seizing live wires, which rose into the air and promptly plunged into its shoulder blades.

What is this? Cecil's stomach lurched at the sound of the Creator's flesh tearing open to accommodate the alien appendages. A new form spurred by Bahamut's magic?

The Creator twitched slightly as sparks burst from its back and it stepped down to the platform, its eyes rolling up toward the heavens as if it were intending to address the very cosmos themselves.

"Long ago... I was born on a blue planet, one much like your own. We prospered more than we could ever sustain...until we consumed our very planet down to its core. By the time a small group of experts noticed, it was already too late to reverse the trend. So, we abandoned our home planet and embarked on a space-wide search for another star on which to live. Months and years passed, and generations lived and died aboard our fleet as we voyaged. Eventually, our ability to survive slowly deteriorated to nothing...stunted by the artificial environment we lived in. The result is this new moon you see...the remains of our space fleet. You trudged through our villages, our gardens, our attempts at cultivating a home…I am the very last survivor of my race."

"So that's what all those strange places here were…" Rosa whispered. If the Creator heard her, it did not pay her any mind. It continued to stroll down the platform, a queer twist set in its mouth as its eyes now swept over each one of them. Despite just being burned alive by Bahamut, it didn't seem too keen to counter – yet.

"What kind of civilization should we have built? How should we have evolved instead? In search of an answer, I embarked on a lifetime of experimentation, creating the crystals to record all of my proceedings. After I made them, I sent them out to countless planets...any place that had the potential to sustain life."

Cecil rose when the creature reached them, gesturing for the others to stand down as he took a few hesitant steps forward, lowering his shield to his side. "And every planet that you retrieved those crystals from…you made to perish? Because you have yet to find the answers you seek?"

The Creator nodded serenely, and Cecil felt a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck, terrified of asking his next question for fear of giving life to the cruel truth that he somehow already knew in his heart of hearts to be real. He didn't understand how he knew – but was sure it had something to do with the way his Lunarian blood was howling in anguish inside his ears, how every survival instinct inside of him had raged awake and was screaming for him to run far away.

But he had to know – he had to hear it from the Creator's lips – regardless if he made it out of this alive or not.

"And the Lunarians' home planet – the star they occupied before the Red Moon – you were the one that destroyed that too, weren't you? You were the Great Behemoth of which Fusoya spoke that devoured their planet whole."

The Creator smiled slightly.

"The Lunarians have always held a fascination for me – not only did many of them manage to escape the initial harvest – but they even absconded with one of my crystals, that even to this day, I haven't located. And now, for me to discover all this time later that they've also managed to breed two generations of a hybrid race…" it cut its eye to Ceodore as it spoke, then turning back to Cecil. "…Those with lesser knowledge of such things would call such a feat a miracle. But to me – it's merely straying from evolution – a temporary diversion on the path to extinction. My maenads found the Lunarians' Red Moon, and now this Blue Planet that they fashioned to be a sanctuary – why they chose to deny a fate that was sealed for them so very long ago, I suppose I'll never understand."

Cecil lowered his head, his hair falling over his face as the first tear spilled over, sliding down the curve of his cheek and splashing onto the tile below with a delicate "plink" that caused it to ignite with a soft blue glow.

Father…Fusoya…I wish you were here…I wish you could see the face of the monster that did this to our people…!

"…You really have to ask "why" the Lunarians did all of that? It's because they wanted to survive…because they had found a reason to go on, despite all the needless pain and suffering you imparted upon them. Isn't that why you're standing before me right now? You wanted to survive…you too, found your purpose that kept you from fading away…" Cecil shook his head, feeling his fingers involuntarily curl into a fist as another tear fell. "…But you twisted that survival instinct into something ugly and hateful…something subhuman."

"To survive…" the Creator trailed off, pressing its fingers to its lips. "…But in the end, it would still all be for naught. What's the point of an inferior race wasting precious energy and resources in a universe that is finite? Someday, we'll all die – and what will we have accomplished if we have not furthered the evolutionary chain to ensure that life goes on? Those that do not contribute should just get out of the way – the ethical path is to eliminate them before they have to know the absolute despair that comes with waiting to die – knowing that there is nothing to be done that will save them!"

"You're wrong!" Cecil cried. "The universe…it's…"

The Creator suddenly gave in to a terrible tremor, clutching its sides as it stumbled backward and threw its head back. Behind it, the two wires that had injected themselves into its back were glowing a faint red, trails of smoke rising from throbbing pustules that had formed over its shoulder blades at the insertion points. "Ngh...! I am sorry...but my craft cannot hold out any longer... The chemical reactions... that were controlled by my outer frame...! They are changing...me... My brain has started to... transform...!"

"CECIL!" Kain cried. "Look out!"

Cecil looked up just in time to see the Creator lunging for him with wild crimson eyes, his right arm mutated into a slender cutlass that was aimed directly for his chest. The screech of steel colliding burst in the air, and Kain appeared before him, gritting his teeth as he blocked the Creator's blade with his lance and shoved it away, slamming his foot into its stomach and sending him flying across the floor. The two wires snapped out of the Creators back, pus-streaked blood oozing out of them as they limply flailed about.

"Kain!" Cecil gasped. "Thank you…"

"Thank me later…here it comes!"

The Creator had recovered from Kain's attack, and was now running toward them with blinding speed, its other arm seizing and throbbing with a sickening cracking noise as it molded itself into a second cutlass. Cecil withdrew his blade, he and Kain nodding to each other before dashing off in opposite directions. The Creator decided to go after Cecil first, which was exactly what the two of them had been hoping would happen.

"Hah!" Cecil grunted, spinning around to meet the Creator's dual blades and countering with a blow to its shoulder. A gelatinous slice of skin flapped open as Cecil pulled back, a milky fluid spouting out over the wound as thread-like weavings danced over the Creator's skin, stitching it back up before Cecil's eyes.

It can regenerate using the same film that was protecting the pod… Good to know.

As they darted over the length of the platform, exchanging blows, Rosa buffed Cecil with spells as quickly as she could rattle them off – Haste to make him fly like the wind, Blink to bless him with the agility to dance between the Creator's dual blades, and Protect for extra insurance against any lucky hits the Creator landed. As Cecil parried a reckless thrust to his abdomen, he made another mental note of the Creator's fighting style: novice, reactionary, but still extremely dangerous.

The Creator has obviously never been in a fight in its life. Its technique is too erratic – it's trying to combine too many combat strategies that play against each other. Everything it has learned is from the crystals' data…it's running on auto-pilot.

…But I can see the mania hemorrhaging from its gaze and feel its desperation in every strike. It's furious…terrified…grief-stricken…!

"Why isn't Cecil trying to advance?" Rydia gasped, noticing that Cecil was being edged closer and closer to the stairs, a trip down which would surely break his neck if he wasn't thrown over the platform's ledge first. Edge waggled his finger.

"Dueling 101, my dear. He's drawing the Creator out of its shell, forcing it to reveal its technique."

"For what purpose?"

"For him."

Edge nodded toward the demolished pod, the top of which where Kain was quietly posed, observing the duel from afar. He slowly lifted his lance, cupping his fingers over the spike until it lit up with a lustrous indigo glow. Across the battlefield, Cecil lifted his gaze, the Creator noticing the reflection of the lance's radiance in Cecil's pupils a moment too late. Cecil thrust forward, feinting an attack on the Creator's chest. As the Creator drew his twin blades in a cross to deflect, Cecil suddenly dropped his sword lower, dodge-rolling to the right as he struck the Creator in the ribs instead. As the Creator shrieked and dove forward after Cecil's vulnerable back, Kain launched himself from the pod, swinging his lance down and plunging it into the Creator's wide-open chest from above.

A burst of opalescent blood spurted from the gaping wound as Kain withdrew his weapon and pivoted on his heel, following up with a roundhouse kick to the Creator's head. It went stumbling backward over the ledge, its mutated arms transforming back into human-esque digits as its eyes desperately searched Cecil's.

"Tell...me... How… How...were we...supposed...to live...?"

Cecil collapsed on his rear, saying nothing as the Creator fell away, a piercing scream rising from the depths that made his heart seize in his chest as it reverberated over and over in the echo chamber created by the floating speakers.

"Hoooooooow!?"

Silently, Kain extended his hand to Cecil, who grabbed hold and hauled himself off of the floor, nodding his thanks. Behind them, Rydia was shaking her head, happy tears streaming down her cheeks as Edge did a backflip and pumped his fist in the air.

"Well done! That was so awesome, I didn't even mind not being invited to the party!"

"Thank goodness…" Rosa trailed off, forcing a small smile as she cradled Ceodore in her arms and pressed her lips to his forehead. "Will you wake up now, my darling? It's safe again…"

"Ceodore…Golbez!" Cecil sheathed his sword, pulling away from Kain and racing to his family's side. Edge had dragged Golbez's body nearer to Rosa so that she could heal him along with Ceodore, but neither of them had yet to regain consciousness. Cecil kneeled down, pushing Ceodore's hair away from his clenched eyes and shaking his head in dismay.

What if that monster robbed them of their light…just like the maenad did to me? Is that why they won't respond…?

"Let's search what's left of that thing's base and see if we can find anything to help us," Kain said quickly, coming up from the rear. "It doesn't look like Bahamut totally wrecked it."

"I'm sorry…" Rydia gulped. "My anger…it just…I couldn't stop myself, and…" She lowered her head. "All I could think about were the eidolons…those poor maenads, born and bred to be used as interplanetary reapers…and all of our needless suffering…just for the Creator to retrieve eight meaningless pieces of glass…!"

"It's OK, Rydia," Rosa said softly. "We know now that the Creator had intentions of harming us one way or the other… No one blames you."

Cecil had crawled over to Golbez, shaking his shoulders roughly as he sputtered off Raise and Cura spells, cursing under his breath when there was no response to the influx of magic that soaked into the sorcerer's body.

Brother…I know you can hear me…please…you have to wake up! For you to have followed Ceodore into such danger… How will I ever forgive myself if I lose you like this…?

Kain and Edge made their way to the pod, about to leap inside when a staggering quake rocked the platform, sending the dying, roasting tentacles into a renewed frenzy as they smashed into the glass at the invaders' feet, sending chunks of the floor spiraling into oblivion below. Edge and Kain leapt back just in time to keep from tumbling over, watching with muted horror as the pod began to convulse and secrete massive amounts of syrupy white film, coating itself in seconds and spilling over into glistening globules that began to sprout hundreds of bulging, blinking blue eyes that resembled those of the Creator's second form. The surviving tentacles that were doused in the film began to merge together, forming a super-sized trio of wiry fins that extended from the sides and top of the pod, undulating eerily like wind-swept banners. A series of wet popping noises rang out, blood-red spikes emerging from the many eyes and newly-formed, leaky abscesses that sprung up the rapidly-stretching and extending rear.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no!" Edge screeched. "HELL NO!"

Kain dragged the shell-shocked Edge out of the way just in time for a cavernous maw to split apart where the entrance to the pod had once been, a black, serpentine tongue darting out between jagged rows of sharpened teeth and beckoning a tidal wave of acid-purple vomit that promptly dissolved what had been left of the floor after the tentacles' assault. As the debris fell away and everyone made a desperate retreat from the ledge, a shapely silhouette clawed its way through the top of the now-quivering mass, flecks of pus and gelatin-like flesh flying in the air as it finally managed to penetrate the surface. The figure had the appearance of a woman carved in marble, curved hips melting into the hardening film of the mutation's skull and bell-shaped breasts concealed by snippets of yellow gossamer arched toward the sky. A blank, featureless face with the exception of two misty eyes and a slit for a mouth crowned her swan-like neck, yards of liquid silver hair drifting behind her against the backdrop of space. The mass began to rise in the air shakily, two violet-tinged wings bursting from her back and ushering forth a powerful zephyr that reeked of blight and a nauseating sweetness that made Cecil's eyes water as he threw himself in front of Rosa, Ceodore and Golbez to shield them.

"Is this the Creator's next form!?" Rydia gasped. "How could it…err…she…have possibly survived that fall!?"

"She's evolving!" Kain screamed over the increasing winds. "The wires in the pod were sustaining her – the body we slayed was just a mobile extension of this shell! She'll just keep mutating and mutating until…!"

The Creator's tongue rolled back out of her mouth, her army of eyes blinking in unison as her jaw began to unhinge with a sickening crack, the windstorm reversing course and suddenly sucking toward the gaping emptiness that was growing by the second, expanding outward like a black hole devouring a star.

"It's going to swallow us!" Edge shouted, his cloak whipping dangerously around his neck as he turned toward the others. "We have to run!"

"Aaahhh!" A violent current broke through, and Cecil was abruptly swept off his feet, his body twisting chaotically as he clawed at the slippery glass tiles to try to drag himself away from the storm. Rosa immediately lunged forward, grabbing his hands in hers as she lowered her head and screamed into her chest.

"Cecil! Don't let go of me!"

"Rosa…!"

He felt something hard collide into him, knocking the wind out of his lungs. The numbing realization that he had let himself slip away from Rosa's grip turned his blood to ice as he flew backwards, collapsed into a crumpled heap of limbs that no longer touched any part of the floor. His head spun from the swells of pain that engulfed his nerves, atoms of black dancing in his vision and Rosa's cries fading away as he twisted his neck and got a hazy glimpse of what had crashed into him.

It was Ceodore's listless body, sailing head-first into the Creator's waiting mouth. Cecil's eyes slid shut, the final fragments of his urge to fight fleeing his broken body in a brilliant burst of starlight.

---

Baron Castle

"Hah! Take that, nasty Imp!"

The apprentice black mage brought his rod down with a crash, smashing it into the already much-disfigured (thanks to a previous round of beatings) hooked nose of the Imp before him. The monster's eyes rolled in the back of its head as it fell to the floor, fading into dust before it could hit the ground. The mage threw his hand up in a cheer, not that anyone else around him was paying much attention amid the chaos that had erupted.

The throne room at the castle was spilling over with monsters that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere – one minute, the boy had been hiding in the black magic classroom with his friends after the first distress signals went off, remembering what King Cecil had told him the last time the monsters had come – that he needed to be a good boy and wait things out. The next minute, the door to the classroom had been smashed open by a barrage of Bombs – a full classroom's worth of Blizzard spells had made quick work of them.

His class had retreated to the throne room (which they had found to be utterly decimated) with many other villagers that had taken refuge, but King Cecil and Queen Rosa were nowhere to be seen. Shortly after, the monsters had poured in after them, forcing everyone into battle.

Suddenly, a veil of moonlight swept through the darkened chamber, shining through the gigantic hole in the northern wall where a row of picture windows had once been and bathing both monster and Baronian alike in divine radiance. Much to the villagers' shock, the monsters fell back, bursting into piles of dust one by one.

The apprentice lowered his rod, glancing toward the destroyed throne a few feet away in confusion as the light began to drain away as swiftly as it had come, the last of the monsters fading away. He suddenly got the strangest feeling that someone was watching him – in fact, it was the same as the warm, floaty feeling that had spread through his chest after King Cecil had saved his life a few days prior.

"King Cecil?" the boy whispered, and a woman who had been fighting a Cockatrice next to him whirled around, blinking as she lowered the knife she had swiped from the castle kitchens.

"What of King Cecil!? Is he here?"

"Uh…" the boy shook his head so quickly that his straw hat flopped over his eyes. "No… But for a moment…I thought he was right beside me."

---

Baron Village

Joanna Farrell was sitting alone at her dining room table, slowly stirring the same cup of tea she had been staring at for the past two hours that had gone long-cold. When she had heard the few guards that seemed to be left in town screaming outside for everyone to take shelter, she didn't bother her usual poking around to get the scoop about what was really going on – a privilege she could usually invoke with minimal grumbling from the soldiers as the mother of the Queen. She simply rose from the easy chair she had been sitting in, blowing out her oil lamp and shuttering her windows before slipping into the kitchen. That was where her favorite portrait of her one and only daughter hung – the one she had to beg and plead Rosa to cooperate for when all she had wanted to do that day was go off on some cockamamie adventure with Cecil.

She already knew Rosa was long-gone and that there was no point in seeking her out – call it a mother's intuition. When Ceodore had been dodgy about her inquiries when he had suddenly made his way to town and just as suddenly had left, that had solidified her suspicion that something much more menacing than just Cecil going off the deep end (those rumors she had been sure to dig into) was going on.

A glistening light suddenly danced in her darkened tea, causing her to stir out her self-induced stupor and spin around in her chair. She realized she had forgotten to shutter the kitchen window too and was greeted by a beautiful spill of moonlight that had filled her backyard and trailed into the kitchen, highlighting the golden hues of Rosa's hair in her portrait hanging across from her. Joanna stood up, pressing her palms to the windowsill as she gazed outside.

The skies were still pitch-black – she had lost track long ago if it was day or night, anymore – once the sun had been blocked out by that abominable twin moon, and she had realized the entirety of her family had disappeared, she didn't much care what time it was anymore. She squinted, tilted her head in unnatural angles, and even dared to slide the window open just a bit to stick her head outside – and yet, she still could not find the source of the light. The twin moon had faded to the ominous color of a bruise that nearly blended in with the sky, and their other moon had completely disappeared – it had begun its cycle anew after the full moon from a few nights prior.

"Mother…"

Joanna shivered, quickly slamming the window shut as she spun around – was she hearing things?

Alas, the kitchen was still empty save for herself, and the pocket of moonlight had disappeared, drenching her in the familiar darkness once again. As she lifted her eyes back to the portrait, she felt her heart leap into her throat: Rosa's hair continued to shine as if the moonlight were still upon it, a knowing smile set upon her bow-shaped lips as she gazed at something with a mixture of sadness and lovingness that seemed to be out of the frame – something just beyond her reach.

"…Rosa!?"

---

Mount Ordeals

The temperatures at the summit of Mount Ordeals had plummeted so steeply in absence of the sun's glare that the normally brisk nights had turned completely frigid, a coating of ice already streaking over the ground and the outside of the abandoned shrine.

Inside, all remained as it was before – wreckage of shattered crystal and glass was strewn about, a trail of dried blood leading from the still void where a mirrored wall had once stood to the middle of the chamber, where it mysteriously and suddenly came to a halt. A serene flutter of breath cascaded from the depths of the void, particles of light daintily rising into the air…

"O mighty dragoon... You have overcome your lonely trials... I know you are capable of this..."

---

Mist

The Elder of Mist was paused next to the pond that marked the resting place of the Motherly Summoner, watching with pursed lips as a palpitating red and orange glow stained the skies of the southern horizon of the Misty Valley.

Baron is burning, he thought to himself soberly. It won't be long until they fall…and then Mist will be next.

The young girl he had escorted to the pond to fetch a bucket of clean water was dallying – he knew it was torture for everyone, especially the children, to be locked up all day and night. But far too many monsters had been spotted wandering the village that had somehow managed to make their way over from across the valley, and the random explosions of meteorites streaking the skies meant that Mist might be assaulted again at any moment. It was too dangerous for anyone to be alone, so an emergency buddy system had been conceived that required anyone leaving the house they had designated as their headquarters to always go with a partner.

Releasing a shaky sigh, the elder crossed his arms, trying to capture as much warmth against his chest as he could manage with this awful chill that had fallen over the planet. As ghastly the scenery was before him, he couldn't bring himself to tear his gaze away.

"What is it?" he finally asked of the girl without turning to look at her. "Is there a hole in that bucket or are you just fooling around? You know it's dangerous to be outside like this."

"It's Rydia," the girl replied nonchalantly, and the elder spun around, his eyebrows knit in confusion.

The child was kneeling at the pebble-covered shore, the bucket next to her filled with clear blue water. The elder followed the girl's gaze toward the pond's center, where concentric ripples had been quietly drifting from a lone, red-streaked hyacinth blossom that had gotten separated from the rest of the plants in the garden behind it that framed Adeline's grave.

"You can sense Rydia?" the elder asked quietly, and the girl nodded, folding her hands together.

"She's very frightened…homesick, too, I think."

The elder sank to his knees next to the girl, placing his hand over hers.

"That is why we must pray for her – for Rydia, and King Edge, and all the rest…we must pray for our planet, too. The eidolons will protect Rydia, whenever she may be – and we will protect her heart from afar."

The little girl bit her lip, her fingers clenching beneath the old man's grip.

"She's in a place…where even the eidolons can't reach her."

---

Eblan

"We can't let them defeat us!" Seneschal cried, swinging his bloodied katana wildly from atop Edge's throne. "Not until His Young Highness returns!"

"Then it will be OK for the monsters to defeat us!?" Chisaki hissed, planting her high-heeled foot into a Desert Sahagin's face and simultaneously stabbing two others that had attempted to foolishly engage her in a pincer attack. All three monsters fell to the floor in a dead heap, exploding into a pile of musky dust.

"No!" Seneschal huffed. "Then he can take over and I can get some sleep!"

"Lady Chisaki…" one of the guards gaped as she smeared her knife on her dress before sheathing it. "…Have you ever considered reenlisting for combat? You're incredible!"

"Of course she is!" another guard sniped, hearts dancing in his eyes as he eyed her appreciatively. "She's the mother and cousin of two of the Eblan Four! That pedigree alone puts her lightyears ahead of us!"

"Oh, boys," Chisaki giggled. "You flatter an old woman. But no – I'm perfectly content with my role as occasional backup. I hung up my ninja garb a long time ago – having a kid is hell on your body – especially one as spirited as my Lapin."

The guards proceeded to fall over themselves in insisting just how not old and not hellish Chisaki was, and Seneschal stomped his foot, his eyes wild with rage.

"You imbeciles are worse than His Young Highness! How could you possibly be flirting at a time like this!?"

Chisaki giggled as she eyed another pair of monsters peering at them from the shattered skylight above, slyly gesturing for them to come at her with the curl of a finger.

"It's all in good fun, Seneschal – I'm retired from dating, too. Why don't you worry about His Highness' love life, and I'll worry about mine?"

"That is hardly the point – " Seneschal began, but Chisaki had already propelled herself into a somersault, latching on to one of the newly-arrived monsters with her thighs and twisting until a sickening crunch rang out. The Seneschal frowned as the monster collapsed beneath Chisaki's weight and shook his head, muttering to himself.

"Young Highness…please come home soon…"

"Whoa!" one of guards cried, pointing toward the skylight. "Look out!"

An entire herd of monsters had crowded above them, clawing at each other in a race to shimmy down into the throne room. Seneschal gritted his teeth, mentally calculating how much time it might take to send one of the guards searching for backup and how long they would last with one less man. Suddenly, the monsters began to howl in agony, each one of them exploding into dust that rained upon the throne room in a curtain of black.

"Thank the gods, backup has arrived!" one of the guards exclaimed. "And they're kicking some serious arse!"

Seneschal cringed, cataloging yet another mental entry on his "Things to Lecture Edge About" list RE: using foul language in front of the cadets. But as the monsters cleared away, exposing what should have been their savior in the collapsing window frame, Seneschal could make nothing out – he caught only the slightest ray of silvery moonlight dancing over the precariously dangling shards of glass – and when he blinked to sweep away some of the dust that had blown into his eyes, it was gone.

"What on…!?"

---

The True Moon, Surface

"Cid, come here! You've gotta see this!"

Cid came lumbering in from the commons area back to the bridge, where Luca was paused over a panel with its cover torn off, a wrench in hand that she had used to pry it away. Her stare, however, was not focused on the work in front of her – a mess of fried and melted circuitry. Cid was about to ask her what the problem was when he caught it out of the corner of his eye – something glowing powerfully on the floor a few feet away, a spill of gold radiating against the well-worn grates.

"What is that?" Cid blinked, and a voice behind him piped up.

"The shattered Crystal of Flight, ya old coot. Your memory getting that bad?"

"Palom!" Luca barked. "Shut that big mouth of yours!"

"Jeeze, sorry," Palom lifted his hands, backing away as Cid turned to glare at him. "Just wanted to see what all the commotion is about. I needed a break from Porom and Leonora – they are demanding!"

"They're unwell," Luca said dryly. "And I seem to remember you about to burst into tears when you carried Leonora to her room, telling her you'd do anything she wanted. Maybe your memory is the one that's getting bad?"

Palom huffed as he crossed his arms over his chest. "You were totally eavesdropping, stalker!"

"Was not."

"Was so."

"OK, would both of you shut up?" Cid cried, pressing his hands to his ears. "Look at the crystal now!"

They instantly ceased their argument, turning back to the glimmering crystal debris. Sliver by sliver, it had begun to float in the air, an obelisk of light erupting in the center of the bridge and capturing each shard into its orbit.

"Cecil…" Cid muttered. "Is this your doing…?"

"The crystal is repairing itself?" Palom gasped. "That means we can go home!"

"Not without Cecil!" Luca cried. "I know he sent us back here…but we can't leave without any of them! This means for sure that they survived Bahamut's attack!"

"I KNOW that!" Palom frowned. "What kind of monster do you think I am?" Luca raised an eyebrow, and he shook his head. "N-Never mind that. What we need to do now is pray – pray to the crystals and pray to Cecil's moon – we have to give them all of our strength, just as we did seventeen years ago in the Tower of Prayer. You remember, don't you Luca?"

"A little," Luca bit her lip. "But the crystals were whole back then, and the Red Moon was part of our orbit. And now…"

"It doesn't matter!" Palom shook his head. "As long as our will is absolute, we can create miracles."

"He's right."

Cid, Luca and Palom spun around to the entrance of the bridge, where Porom was clinging to the threshold frame to hold herself up. Her voice cracked as a tear slid down her cheek, splashing onto the wilted whisperweed she still had pinned to her collar. "I know the Elder isn't here to help us, and that the crystals are gone…but we still have to try. Palom and I will lead the prayer ceremony in the Elder's place – but we need everyone's help for this to work!"

"I'm on it!" Cid nodded. I'll wrangle everyone into the bridge – we'll use the Crystal of Flight's light as our conduit!" He pressed the lock release to bolt outside, where he knew at least a few people were helping Luca by investigating the ship's exterior damage and making a report.

"I'll help with getting Leonora up," Luca offered, setting down her wrench. Palom shot her a wary look, and she crossed her arms, sneering right back.

"Come on – what do you think I'm going to do to her!?"

"Get her all riled up while she's sick by telling her horrible things about me," Palom snapped, and Luca's face suddenly fell, taking him aback.

"I…I wouldn't do that. Leonora sees you for what you are…that much is plain to see. If you're so worried about what other people think about you, maybe it means you're not being entirely open with her."

"A-About what?" Palom blanched, and Luca shook her head, pushing past him. Porom slowly shifted away from the door so that Luca could slip through.

"Figure it out yourself, genius."

Palom's jaw dropped as he looked to Porom, who despite her crippling exhaustion, had a small smile on her face. "Do you know what she's going on about?"

"Maybe," Porom shrugged, limping the rest of the way inside. "But we've got slightly more important issues than your emotional immaturity to deal with right now."

---

The first thought that drifted through Cecil's mind as his mind slowly awoke from its tranquil, dreamless slumber was how magnificent it felt not to be in pain anymore.

It feels as if my body has never sustained so much as a bruise…

Every tendon is alert, alive with vitality, abounding with strength…

And my heart…at long last, the excruciating chaos has been quelled…

His eyes slid open, and he was greeted with a scintillating synthesis of cerulean and crystal that beckoned from all around – such fierce, yet gentle luminosity that he wanted to sink into like the arms of a lover and never leave again. It took him a few moments to realize that he was suspended in mid-air, hovering over a sea of mist that seemed to drift onward forever. Gingerly lowering his foot, he saw that his skin was bare and whole – no evidence of swelling from so much walking and running, and the scars on his legs he had acquired from years of battle (and some youthful foolishness) had faded away, leaving only the downy spray of silver-white hair that trailed up the indented curve of his calves and the length of his thighs. He observed the same for his stomach and chest, and held his hands in front of him, now free of his gauntlets, flexing his digits and marveling at the fluid way they moved through the air – no more knuckles cracking, jammed joints throbbing, or broken fingernails slicing open his skin.

Unconsciously, his hand drifted to his left ear lobe, and he felt the corners of his mouth lift as his fingertip pressed into the nub of scar tissue positioned next to his ill-advised childhood piercing.

When his feet hit the mist, he did not plunge within – something invisible was holding him aloft, like a Float spell. But when he glanced over his shoulder to confirm the magic's presence, he didn't see familiar flash of the transparent wings. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and relishing in the rush of clear, sweet air that unfolded in his chest, filling him with another surge of divine energy.

I've never felt this alive in my life…

So, could it be that I'm actually...

He let that last thought evaporate from his consciousness as he walked forward, noticing that his heart began to pound faster as he made his approach to the north, where a particularly dazzling prism of light was glinting at him welcomingly. As he got closer, he saw a figure with sun kissed hair spilled across the mist, floating on its surface with diamond beads of water droplets that dotted the apples of her cheeks, the valley between her breasts, and the half-moon of her abdomen – a flower greeting the dawn drenched in morning dew.

Rosa, his heart beamed. Thank the gods…

He kneeled down beside her, pulling her into his arms and pressing his lips to her forehead. He felt her mouth move against him and the tickle of her eyelashes brushing against his jaw as she opened her eyes. As soon she realized who it was, she sank into him willingly, digging her fingernails into his shoulder blades and whispering his name.

He pulled back, sliding a lock of her hair behind her ear and letting his senses drink in every last inch of her.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded, sitting back slightly to take in more of their surroundings. He could see halcyon light that had flooded her eyes slowly fade to confusion in the gleam of her enlarged pupils.

"Cecil…where are we?"

"I'm not sure. I just woke up like this – I didn't really think about where I was setting off to – I just let my body carry me and eventually found you."

"Right," she murmured, lowering her gaze in thought. "The last thing I remember is the Creator…she tore you and Ceodore away from me, and…!"

Ahhh! Cecil winced as the memory branded itself back onto his mind, his heart twisting in his chest as he recalled the utter despair that had overtaken him as he had watched Ceodore sink into oblivion. The agonized screams of the others rang in his ears, and he clutched his hands to his head, unleashing a strangled cry.

My son…my one and only child…he's…!

And the others…Kain, Rydia, Edge, Golbez…are they gone too?

How…HOW could I have forgotten?

"Cecil!" Rosa yanked away his hands, grasping his wrists as she pressed her forehead to his. "Please…I need you with me! Don't leave me again – no matter how much it hurts to remember!"

"I'm sorry," Cecil rasped, shaking his head. "I'm sorry…I…"

"I know," Rosa sighed, reluctantly releasing him. "It…it aches…it aches like nothing I've ever felt before," she pressed her lips together, shivering. "…If we're here like this…does this mean we failed? Did the Creator…"

"…Kill us?" Cecil finished, and she nodded, wincing. He sat back, idly rubbing his wrists where Rosa had taken hold. "…I had the same thought when I woke up. When I rose, I had this feeling…of indescribable peace. My body and my mind were finally at rest. But if we're here…where are the others? Did they manage to escape?"

"They could have," Rosa lowered her head. "Although I don't see how. Cecil…I'm just…so scared. What are we supposed to do now if we can't go home? Where are our friends…?"

Her eyes began to water, her tears reflecting the crystal that surrounded them and transforming her eyes into depthless prisms that he thought he could lose himself in forever. As he felt himself falling into her stare, another memory slowly made its way back to the surface of his mind…

The Creator…she said our universe was finite – that everything has to die in order to sustain the one true evolutionary path she is obsessed with finding with the help of the crystals.

But the crystals…in a place like this, where life, pain, suffering and even they themselves have ceased to exist…they still shine with resplendent light, using our souls as the catalyst in the absence of all else.

I feel that light in my heart when I think about the ones I love – Ceodore, Kain, Rydia, Edge…Golbez – and all the others waiting for us back in our world.

I see it shining before me in Rosa's eyes – reaching me even in the darkest depths of despair. And even though I didn't remember a thing when I woke up, my body led me right to her…like it was instinct encoded within my very DNA.

The Creator was able to revive our enemies with the crystals – even my past self. Every catastrophe she has brought upon us she did so using only the data she retrieved – even when the souls she revived were unwilling, and even as the crystals lost their light.

What if we used the crystals the same way…?

"Don't be scared," Cecil said softly, cupping her face in his hands and gingerly wiping away the first tear to fall. "We'll be with them again soon."

"…What?" Rosa blinked. "I don't understand."

"I didn't either, until just now," Cecil shook his head. "The answer has been in front of us this entire time – and it was all the Creator's doing."

She stared up at him, biting her lip. "…I am going to need more of an explanation than that."

"I'm getting to it," Cecil smiled slightly. "The crystals were created to record evolution. They've borne witness to every event that has ever occurred on our planet – which was how the Creator was able to repeat history and exploit our weaknesses. Right?"

"Right," Rosa nodded. "So…?"

"So, that means they recorded us, too," Cecil said. "It may be true that our bodies are shells – they die, they decay, they return to the planet. But our souls – thanks to the crystals' watchfulness of our existence – have been made eternal." He took her hand, pressing it to his chest – her fingers curled slightly over his beating heart. "That's how my father is able to continue watching over us on Mount Ordeals. How King Baron's soul was revived as an Eidolon. How Rydia's mother guards Mist alongside her phantom dragon. How our enemies were able to return on this moon. Everything that the crystals record becomes part of their DNA – DNA that is constantly evolving as they acquire more knowledge and expend energy protecting our planet. And that energy…"

"…Fuels the crystals with their light," Rosa finished, her eyes widening. "You're saying that our souls became one with the crystals when they were imprinted upon the crystals' memory? Does that mean we can harness their power even after their light has vanished?"

"That's my theory. The Creator thinks that our universe is finite and has an expiration date that only the most evolved will be able to circumvent – but how can that be if her own creation holds infinite energy? As long as there are crystals somewhere in the universe – there will be life. And as long as there is life, the crystals will continue to shine – just like darkness and light, they have a symbiotic relationship. By making the crystals in the first place…the Creator ensured we will always have a place in this world."

"And how are we supposed to use that power to find the others if we're…we're…?" She couldn't bring herself to say it out loud – that terrible word that meant the end of everything she had known and loved in her short life. She hadn't been ready, hadn't been able to say a proper good-bye… It had all happened too suddenly, with the last memory burned into her mind of Ceodore's body being absorbed into the darkness. She had accepted the possibility of what could come to pass when she stepped onto on the Lunar Whale, but had buried it deep down inside of her – they had created miracles before, and she had harbored hope that they could craft another. But now…

Cecil lowered his eyes, lacing his fingers with hers. He hated to see the ache etched into her features and wanted to tear away the veil of despair that had fallen over her eyes. The dreamtide oath he had sworn long ago to always protect the girl who had become his living dream burned in his heart even now – even when they were both beyond saving.

"Know this, Rosa – that no matter how many times we may fall – I will pray. I'll pray to the crystals for our souls to be reborn to a new future, one where our suffering ceases at long last, where we can live our dreams and finally grasp hold of happiness. And in that future – no matter what new form you or I may take, or what worlds we end up in…I will always find you. Over and over again, as many times as it takes – I will find you and our friends, and we'll begin anew together. I promise with everything I have, everything I am – I will always return to your side."

"Cecil…" Rosa's voice trembled as she trailed a finger through the hair that had fallen around his face. "How can you be so sure…?"

"Because I have to be," Cecil caught her hand within his, pulling her into his chest. "You, and Ceodore, and Kain…and all of our friends who have done so much to shape my world…to shape my very soul…you are my reason to survive. You are my light."

The last thing he saw before burying his face in the golden waves of her hair was the twinkling of rainbow rays shining from high above, drifting over them like the embrace of a seraphim's wings. A rush of warmth raced up his cheeks, the cerulean glare from the crystals drowning in a blinding spread of divine luminescence.

Crystals of Light, Crystals of Darkness…please hear my prayer!

The crescendo of shattering glass sang in Cecil's ears, the final beat of his heart punctuating the chaos as he collapsed wordlessly in Rosa's still arms.

---

"You have to get back up!"

"Please…stay strong!"

"You promised…you promised we'd all come home, together…!"

"You can't leave us now – there's still too much to do!"

Ah, even now, I can still hear them…I guess they weren't so far away after all. My friends…I know we'll meet again soon…please wait for me.

A small smile crept over Cecil's lips as a maelstrom of catastrophic proportions erupted around him.

The Creator, her face twisted in a confused sneer, staggered back as eight reflections of piercing light shot into the atmosphere and tore away the cloak of darkness that concealed the sky, revealing a brilliant swirl of violet and cerulean stirred into traces of silver moonlight. Spread before her was a mass of quivering, shining crystal that had overtaken the entirety of the platform below, the color so clear and true that she could see through it as easily as water. Deep cracks were rapidly spreading over the crystal's face, splintering into countless fractures.

Encased within were five figures – flash-frozen in time all with the same peaceful looks veiling their faces despite the storm raging abound. The first major chunk of crystalline debris shattered off of the figure in the center, revealing a spill of silver and sparkling amazonite as the shards dissolved into diamond granules.

Mmmm? Cecil slightly winced as a gale of wind tore past his ear, sending his body into a fit of shivers that stirred his every fiber. Another nightmare…?

With great effort, he opened his eyes, his vision a blur of darkness and starlight. He could make out the shadow of a figure standing between him and the Creator with one hand extended in the air, the sound of fabric snapping in the wind shooting through him like the crack of a whip. He attempted to lift his hands to grind away the sleep from his eyes, only to realize that they were stuck. He glanced down, his heart leaping into his throat.

From the chest down, he was trapped in a tower of crystal, his hands pinned to his hips – crystal that was anchoring him from the raging vacuum that was attempting to drag him into the unhinged jaw of the Creator's mutated mouth.

"How…!?" Cecil rasped, and the figure before him spun around, violet and cerulean colliding as their eyes met, the world exploding into view once more.

"I can't hold her back much longer, Cecil! Wake the others and harness the crystals' light!"

"Golbez!" Cecil gasped. "You're alive! And…" He noticed the glowing shard grasped in Golbez's left hand, sparkling with the same brilliance as the crystal that had embraced his form. "Is that…?"

"HURRY!" Golbez growled, gritting his teeth as he turned back to the Creator, his cloak flying up wildly over his shoulders as another cyclone of wind spun past. It was only then that Cecil noticed what else Golbez was carrying – tucked under his right arm, windswept and unconscious but very much alive – was Ceodore.

The crystals' light… Cecil lifted his head, knowing that he would find what he was looking for before his body had even obeyed his command. Drifting above, oblivious to the surrounding storm, were the Blue Planet's eight crystals, each brimming with a luminescence more powerful than Cecil had ever seen in his life.

Rosa…Kain…Rydia…Edge…! I cannot do this alone – please, wake up…lend me your strength just one more time!

The Creator unleashed a world-ending scream as the rest of the crystal binding Cecil and the others shattered in a catastrophic explosion, the broken shards rising into the sky above them like reverse rain. Beams of laser-thin ultraviolet light shot between each of the shards, weaving a shield of light around the seven warriors and forcing the winds that were sucking them in to come to a sudden and dramatic halt.

"How is this happening!?" The Creator growled, her voice rising dangerously as the speakers around them became drowned in static and started to smoke. "That crystal…it cannot be…!" Cecil stepped forward, his eyes narrowing as Golbez let out a strained laugh.

"That's right – it's the crystal that has eluded you for so long – the one you tried to steal from our ancestors when you destroyed their planet. All of this…" Golbez gestured behind him toward the shield, "…Was born from the memory contained within a single shard…and the hopes of countless Lunarians and humans!"

Oh my gods…! Cecil gasped. I handed Golbez a shard of the shattered ninth crystal before the mysterious girl found us in the Lunar Core…he's been holding onto it this entire time, even though he believed his heart could not gift it light…?

"Cecil!" He heard a voice call out from behind and felt a hand slip into his. He turned, his heart hammering as his eyes fell upon Rosa's.

"Y…You're awake…"

"Thanks to you and your brother," Rosa smiled. "I'm not ready to sleep, yet – this for Ceodore's future...our future...the future of everyone on our planet!"

"We will stop this moon…and you…right where you stand!" Kain approached Cecil's opposite side, extending his hand and summoning his lance, which flew into his fingers effortlessly. He turned to Cecil, flashing a teasing smile. "Not that any of us could sleep anyway, with all that racket you were making – I could hear your voice calling out to me with every beat of my heart. I guess even crystal isn't soundproof."

"Kain!" Cecil exclaimed. "Are you OK?"

"Never better," Kain twirled his lance. "Do you really think I would let you and Rosa rush into danger without me?"

"Never," Cecil breathed, and they both lifted their hands, bumping each other's fists.

"We aren't dead yet, people!" Edge laughed, skidding next to them and scratching his head – crystal dust fluttered out of his hair in a glittering flurry. "Although…I have to admit, I thought I was for a while there. I saw some pretty weird stuff while I was stewing in that crystal – including a guy with pointy horns checking a list for my name."

"You are truly an idiot," Rydia moaned, smacking Edge upside the head as she flanked Kain's other side. "I could hear all of our friends…their prayers, their well-wishes…both for us and for our beloved planet!"

"I might have heard something like that, too," Edge winked, and she responded with a gracious rolling of her eyes.

"Impossible!" The Creator screamed, several pustules exploding over her abdomen as they swelled red with her rage. "You're too weak…even when you mix your blood with those of superior beings, you are still not enough to usher this universe to a new era! Why do you insist on RUINING EVERYTHING!?"

"Because you are the one that is wrong!" Cecil shouted. "To you, we may seem weak and disposable – but our lives are tied by the deepest of bonds...bonds that give us strength and make us more powerful than we could ever hope to be alone! You, nor anyone else, shall ever tear them asunder – no matter what kind of trickery you employ with the crystals. My body will someday die, but the impact of my relationships with my friends and my family will be felt long after I am gone – my soul will always be proof that you failed to render us truly extinct!"

"Bonds!?" The Creator chortled, shaking her head. "You think I didn't have bonds with the comrades I watched die? You think I wanted to endlessly wander through space and time for the remainder of my days alone? You think all of the others who perished before you could have beaten evolution if they just loved each other a little more? Your total and flagrant disrespect for my scientific research makes me sick…everything you are blathering on about is just a fantasy. And you are mere minutes away from colliding with your doomed planet – striking me down will do nothing to alter your fate!"

"In that case, I'll make it my final act to prove you wrong," Cecil hissed. "What you may deem a fantasy…is our reality!"

"Ugh…Cecil…!" Golbez collapsed to his knees with Ceodore at his side, the crystal shard bouncing out of his hands and sliding across the tile past the barrier of light. The Creator inhaled deeply, the crystal getting sucked into her gullet within seconds, and the barrier shuddered and disappeared with the breathy tinkle of a bell. Darkness fell upon them once more, so deeply penetrating that Cecil couldn't even see his hand in front of his face – the eight crystals above them had gone dark.

"The Creator is protected by the darkness!" Golbez moaned, lowering his head. "It must be cleared away… Let the crystals shine upon the darkness!" With a final gasp, he slumped to the ground, the last of his strength deserting him as he passed out on top of Ceodore.

"Darkness and light…they hold no consequence to me, and matter not," the Creator sneered, hovering closer. "Do you forget that I am the crystals' master? The crystals and the maenads…they will never turn against me – no matter how much you beg!"

"Everyone!" Cecil clenched his jaw, blindly grabbing both Rosa and Kain's hands in each of his own. "Give yourselves to the crystals – pour everything you have inside of them! We're the only ones left that can fill them with light!"

"I'm here, Cecil!" Rydia called, taking Kain's hand. "And so are all of my eidolons!"

"You have the whole of Eblan by your side," Edge added, gingerly taking Rosa's other hand. Instead of ducking away, she squeezed his hand assuredly, pulling him closer.

Thank you, my friends! Cecil thought, forcing himself to close his eyes even as the gleam of the Creator's bulging, percolating form drifted dangerously closer. I can't be afraid…I can't be distracted…I have to remember…

…Everything I am…it's thanks to them.

Kain…you taught me how to listen to my heart, most importantly when I was too afraid to hear what it had to say.

Rosa…you've blessed me with true love…my living dream, my anchor to this world that keeps me from drifting back into a sea of darkness.

Rydia…time and time again, you remind me of the power of forgiveness, and the strength that can be found in redemption. Even after all this time, you still believed in the broken dark knight that demolished your village – enough so to risk your life standing up to the most powerful nation in the world.

Edge…It's because of you that I now know that loyalty is born from all types of friendships – old and new, those forged by blood and those forged by fire. You have one of the truest hearts I have come to know from any man – and I'm thankful you've kept a place for myself and my family in yours, even as the days turn into years before we speak again.

And Theodor – no, Golbez – my brother…if it wasn't for you…I…I might have been the one who…

"Father!"

Cecil felt a pair of skinny, but strong arms wrap around his waist, crushing the air out of his lungs. When he peered down, he saw Ceodore staring up at him, a lopsided smile framing the bow-shaped mouth he had inherited from his mother…

…And two enigmatic cerulean pools scrunched from laugh lines.

"Ceodore!" Cecil gasped, pulling the boy to him tightly. "Are you…"

But as his hands pressed into Ceodore's back, he realized he could feel the jutting curve of his shoulder blades through his tunic, and that no plate of armor separated the two of them in their embrace. Pulling back slightly, Cecil realized that his son was dressed simply in white jersey silk and black leggings, his feet bare and his headband missing – his hair was even more of a crazy mess than usual with spikes that went in every direction – faded back to its usual platinum hue.

Ceodore noticed the look of confusion on Cecil's face, his smile curving downward slightly.

"Sorry, Father…this is just a daydream. Or at the very least, not quite reality. But I heard your heart crying out – and I just wanted to let you know that no matter what may happen, I believe in you. There's so much else I wanted to tell you, but…" he blushed, pushing his hand through his hair. "…But I think this is most important for now."

"Ceodore…" Cecil shook his head, smiling. "When did you get so grown-up?"

"Maybe since I started realizing we have more in common than I ever thought," Ceodore tilted his head. "…And that our differences were because you only wanted to make things better for me than they were for you."

"Thank you, my son…" Cecil pressed his lips to Ceodore's forehead, closing his eyes. "Thank you for helping me realize what it was my own father was fighting for so long ago…the moment you came into this world…I finally understood what it meant to truly fight for the future."

He felt himself stumble forward as his hands plunged through warm air, and when he opened his eyes, he found Ceodore was gone. In the boy's place was the sword Cecil had received from the dark knight, sprouting out of cluster of crystal and brimming silently with hallowed light. When he lifted the blade, holy-tinged orbitals of magic raced through the curve of alabaster steel, transforming it into dazzling crystal and spraying over the floor, igniting violet firelight at Cecil's feet in the hanging darkness. He could feel everyone's power coursing through the chambers of his heart, racing through his veins with the speed of light and enkindling his every last cell with divine radiance: Kain's devotion, Rosa's love, Rydia's compassion, Edge's loyalty, Ceodore's resolve, and Golbez's courage. He could feel their strength pulsing through his fingertips into the weapon – hear the rhythm of their hearts reverberating with his as the blade silently shed its light…

So, this is the true form of the dark knight's blade! Cecil thought, his heart racing wildly as he turned it over in his fingers. Exonerated from my blood-stained past and blessed by the crystals' radiance…

This is…the Lightbringer!

Cecil's eyes snapped open just in time to see the Creator's monstrous jaws gnash hungrily in his face, the gleam of venom-laced jagged teeth a fraction of an inch from the tip of his nose as a spray of repugnant projectile vomit shot from the back of her throat. Before he could think to raise his shield in retaliation, the acid splashed harmlessly into an invisible barrier with a delicate ripple that bent the air in front of his face, igniting it into a swell of prismatic light that engulfed the party. A beam of light shot out from behind Cecil, plunging into the ceiling of the rainbow dome and releasing an explosion of angel feathers that rained upon them from above. One of the feathers brushed the top of his head and dissolved into moonlit dust, infusing him with a flux of adrenaline and speed that turned his muscles into pure electricity. Behind him were Rosa and Rydia, heads bowed and hands jointed together, their eyes resplendent with the reflection of magic detonating around them as they chanted the miraculous spell. At his side were Kain and Edge, weapons cocked and at the ready.

"This is the end of your experiment," Cecil said softly, the reflection of his gaze piercing him one-hundred-fold in the twitching, watery colony of eyes that hovered before him. He swung the Lightbringer over his head, leaping into the air and plunging it into the Creator's chest, the blade slicing cleanly through her back and tearing open an exit wound in the dead center of her wings. She wordlessly took in the stain of red and white that had splattered across hers and Cecil's chests, her eyes then trailing to Cecil's fingers still wrapped around the hilt above her breasts as the crystals above suddenly burst back to life, flooding the depths with sublime light. She reeled back, lifting her arms to shield her face and bleating faintly.

"These…these crystals... Why…do they betray me…?"

Her second mouth carved into the front of her body flapped uncontrollably like a fish fighting for oxygen outside the ocean. Cecil pressed deeper, gritting his teeth as he felt the Lightbringer tear muscle and marrow alike. "The crystals…are choosing life. They have become one with the Blue Planet's people…and life is what we pray for above all else!"

"Ugh…erg…" the Creator shuddered, slumping forward on Cecil's blade as her eyes slid shut and her arms fell to her sides. Behind her, her wings fell like wilted flowers crushed beneath a boot, feathers scattering into an unperceivable cosmic breeze. "You must...!"

"What?" Cecil frowned, leaning in so that her lips were inches from his ear. The Creator slowly reached up, pressing her frigid fingers over Cecil's hands and lifting her gaze to his. A silent scream rose in his throat as the light from the crystals caught her stare, igniting it the same brilliant cerulean as his own.

"Stop...stop me...now!"

She clutched hold of his hands, forcing the Lightbringer yet deeper inside of her and unleashing a tortured wail as rapidly-spreading fissures unfurled throughout her body, rays of ultraviolet shining through the gushing rivers of accompanying blood. Cecil staggered back, withdrawing his weapon as the she began to cough up orbs of light, violet flares erupting in the space between them.

"Cecil, look out!" Kain cried. "The crystal shard she swallowed…it's…!"

The sudden, violent shaking beneath Cecil's feet drowned out Kain's warning, but he had heard quite enough – he turned and fled, jumping from the mutated thorax of the Creator and crashing into the platform below in a clumsy dodge roll as her humanoid half exploded from the Holy spell the Lightbringer had cast upon her. The mutated half was detonating in a flurry of moonbeams, silver light slicing through the globs of quivering white and shooting into the galaxy above.

"The destruction has already begun..." the Creator rasped, her voice once again crackling over the speakers. Half of her humanoid anatomy had melted back into the waxy form she had first created them with, violet smoke from the spell leaking out of her pockmarked, leaking sores as she shrunk away from them. "My destruction... and that of this moon... You must run!" As if to prove her point, a colossal crash of thunder suddenly ripped across the sky, its strength nearly upending everyone standing on the platform below.

"Are…are you kidding me!?" Edge gulped.

"She's...trying to take us with her!" Rosa screeched, dropping Rydia's hands. Rydia blinked away the trance the two of them had sunken into, her face paling when her mind finally caught her up to the reality of their current situation.

"Then we...we need to hurry!"

As they scrambled to grab the eight crystals, Kain knelt over Golbez and Ceodore, a cluster of tiles collapsing only feet away. They shattered into diamond dust before sinking to the nothingness below, a bead of sweat sliding down Kain's forehead as he desperately shook Golbez's shoulders back and forth.

"This moon is already starting to fall apart! Wake up…wake up, now!" When he got no response, he drew his hand back, taking a deep breath and striking Golbez across the face with a deafening crack.

"Ugh…" Golbez moaned, his eyes rolling in the back of his head as his body twitched back to consciousness. "Did…you…enjoy that, Highwind…? A Raise spell would have been sufficient…"

"I'd enjoy it a lot more if we were anywhere but here," Kain snapped, grabbing Golbez's arm and hauling him to his feet. "Can you walk on your own?"

Golbez nodded, snatching his arm away warily as a hand-shaped stain of red began to blossom across his cheek.

Cecil knelt down, scooping Ceodore into his arms as he took one last look over his shoulder at the Creator. She was clawing at her melting face now, her bottom half spewing a cloud of innumerable toxins and bodily fluids as it distended in different directions like an overfilled balloon. Whatever was happening to her was nothing they could stop now…when she had assimilated with her vessel, she had most likely absorbed inside of her the controls to the moon as well. He realized with a sinking heart that they truly had no choice but to run, and rose to his feet, clutching Ceodore close.

"RETREAT!"

They bolted down the stairs single-file, a chorus of shattering glass clanging overhead as the platform they had been battling upon collapsed in on itself, chunks of crystal and metal raining from the sky that they were forced to dodge when they finally reached the level they had come in on. An earth-shaking roar discharged behind them, and the last thing Golbez saw before leaping into the waiting rune was the shadow of the battered and dying Creator only yards behind them, a trail of pus and acid dissolving their path in her wake – now they couldn't turn back, even if they had wanted to. She paused for only a moment, shuddering with an agonizing cough as something small and sparkling flew out of the mutated half's mouth, bouncing delicately on the pathway before sliding to Golbez's feet.

He bent down, snatching the acid-worn crystal shard and swiping it across his cloak to clean it off before dropping it into a hidden pocket.

She's following us…something inside of her still wants us dead, no matter what it takes!

After rushing through the crystal graveyard, which was now teeming with herds of wild Behemoths that Rydia was able to clear out of their way with one of Leviathan's massive tidal waves, they found themselves back in the laboratory, where all hell was breaking loose. Hundreds of steam valves and frayed cords were shaken loose from the ever-worsening quakes, filling the lab with a sticky, obscuring haze that made it nearly impossible to see where the live wires were sparking, if not for their occasional spurts of light. The glass panels on the pods were all either shattered or thrown open, with not a single maenad to be seen within.

…That was, except for the one calmly blocking their exit, her curious amber eyes sweeping over them like a solar eclipse.

"You!" Cecil gasped as they skidded to a stop, the party nearly colliding into her.

The little girl from earlier pointedly ignored Cecil, tilting her head in Rydia's direction as she came running toward them from the rear. When she spotted the child, her eyes went wide with shock.

"You're still alive! Where did your friends go?"

The maenad rested her hands on her hips, one eyebrow raised. "I waited, as you ordered..."

"…Seriously?" Edge muttered. "Does this kid have a death wish?"

Before Rydia could say anything more, a raucous crash greeted them from behind, one of the pods flying over their heads in the air and smashing into the wall above the threshold of the exit, a shower of debris following. Rydia cried out, shoving the little girl out of the way just as a twisted piece of metal crashed to the ground, fracturing the tile below into hundreds of cracked pieces and blocking their way out. As the Creator rounded a corner of now-decimated pods, they spotted another pod wrapped up in her endless black tongue that she was preparing to launch.

"Run!" Kain grunted, throwing his weight against the metal to push it out of the way as the Creator flicked her tongue into the air. Suddenly, a chorus of voices greeted them from above, a flurry of delicate white feet falling away from the exposed ductwork in the ceiling and touching down between the party and the Creator. It was three maenads, their right hands extended toward the Creator in mid-spell.

"Escape while you can. We will stop her." In tandem, they fired off three Flare spells, all of which collided with the Creator in a massive explosion.

"What!?" Rosa gaped, and Cecil shook his head, smashing his foot into the debris Kain had nearly shoved away as Ceodore jostled in his arms.

"Forget it! If they want to help, let them!"

The scrap metal finally crashed out of the way, exposing their exit once more. Rydia pulled away from the girl, who was staring at the backs of the maenads waging battle with the Creator, her eyes lightless pools reflecting only the searing light of the flames that had suddenly overtaken the pod the Creator had been carrying and was rapidly climbing their way up her tongue to consume the rest of her. Rydia fell back on her heels as she silently observed the child, her pulse throbbing in her ears.

I've seen this very same face in my dreams…countless times, in countless nightmares…ever since that day Cecil and Kain came to Mist...

The face of a child watching as everything she knows and loves burns before her very eyes… Then the overwhelming despair sinks into the hollows of your bones where hope once lived…

…and innocence dies upon the pyre of war forevermore.

"Come along with us!" Rydia burst out, and the party stared at her, dumbfounded, as the little girl absentmindedly reached up to smooth down the hair that was sticking out of her barrette. The spontaneous request did not seem to please or infuriate her – but after what felt like an eternity, she finally tore her gaze away from the other maenads, blinking up at Rydia.

"Understood..."

"Rydia…" Edge crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow. "…Are you sure? She'd small…but she's still with the enemy."

"I…I'm sure," Rydia mumbled, rising back to her feet as the little girl quietly fell into step behind her, waiting patiently for Kain to open the door. "Please, trust me."

And for once, Edge had nothing more to say. He shrugged, turning to Cecil and Rosa, both of whom were still eying the girl like she was a ticking time bomb.

"Well, if that's everyone…should we Teleport ourselves out of here while the maenads take care of the Creator?"

"Oh…Oh!" Rosa blinked, snapping out of her trance. She had only heard half of what he had said yet comprehended it entirely. "That's a great idea. Everyone, hold on to me!"

Rydia grabbed the child's hand as everyone huddled in close, and Rosa cast the spell. But when nothing happened, she pressed her hand to her mouth, gazing up toward the ceiling.

"It's too unstable in here…the dimensional folds that were keeping this place functional are twisting out of control. The magic just bounces around like a rubber ball against a wall…it doesn't know how to find us a path out."

"The garden where we fought Bahamut may be our best bet," Cecil offered. "The air in there felt different from everywhere else on this moon – it may be the only non-artificial environment left in this place that the Creator didn't warp to meet her needs."

"We'll try again there!" Rosa nodded. "Let's hurry for the gardens!"

As they threw the doors open to the next corridor, the battling maenads' collective pleas reverberated in all their minds, echoing as gently as the spill of a teardrop in the vast ocean in the same detached tone the mysterious girl had always used with them throughout their encounters.

"Watch that child…"

In the stretch of the next corridor, the Creator once again forced her way through, laughing manically as she unleashed a cloud of poison gas that raced after the party in swirls of putrid violet.

"What happened to the maenads in the lab?" Rosa gasped. "Did the Creator…?"

The child glanced over her shoulder as Rydia desperately pulled her along, watching languidly as another pair of maenads teleported behind them and stalled the Creator with a flurry of black magic. Again, the distant voice of the mysterious girl cried out to them, and Rydia watched the girl silently mouth along with the voice, her eyes unblinking pools of liquid gold.

"That child is us."

"Almost…there…!" Kain huffed, and Rydia gripped the child's hand tighter, lowering her chin to her chest.

This girl…she's your last hope to experience the world the way you've always longed to…isn't she?

They tumbled into the next portal, which had appeared as soon as they approached – Cecil wasn't sure if it was the maenads' doing, or if the ship was so far-gone that everything was starting to short-circuit, including the Creator's magic. The party spilled into the garden, and Rosa wasted no time attempting Teleport again. A delicate haze of light had begun to wrap itself around their forms when a terrible tremble rocked the garden, sending surging plates of rock and crystal into the group and tossing them away from each other.

"Noooo!" Rosa shrieked, the spell fading from her mind as she smashed into one of the fallen archways. Above her, the Creator's bloated form squeezed out of the collapsing portal, drifting over her in a cloud of stink and rot that she had to cover her face from to keep herself from vomiting. The Creator had become a charred, broiled and decomposing mess – her humanoid figurehead had nearly completely melted into a puddle of gassy syrup that was dripping on the ground as she floated by, occasionally expelling bubbles that make a sickening cracking noise as they popped. The pulsing collection of eyeballs and spikes that made up her abdomen were dripping with an excess of green, brown and purple venoms, a section of which that would occasionally tremble and ripple beneath the mound of swollen white flesh to produce a new half-formed eye or impotent spike.

"Stay back!" Rydia cried, pushing the child behind her. The girl clung to Rydia's leg, gazing up at the Creator wondrously as Golbez, Edge and Kain pressed forward, shielding both they and Cecil, who was still holding Ceodore. He watched Rosa worriedly, but she frantically shook her head to deter him from taking any action, pressing a finger to her lips. She couldn't be sure, but she had thought perhaps the Creator had not noticed her – and she wanted it to stay that way for the time being. If the others could buy her enough time, perhaps she could…

"You will go no further!" Golbez growled, raising his sword. "This ends now!"

"The…child…" the Creator hissed. "Return her to me…she must perish. She too, is a failure…like all the rest…the maenads…must not..."

"Creator, how could you...?"

A new maenad appeared before the party, her eyes watering as she approached the monstrosity with folded, shaking hands.

"Another one?" Cecil murmured under his breath.

"...She's terrified!" Rydia gasped.

"You want us to die…yet you are our father!" the maenad wept, taking a step closer, "…And our mother! You taught us all you knew so that we could go into the world and seek out the crystals… In the end, did we truly not make you happy? Did we not assuage your loneliness? Did we not give you hope for a new future with each crystal we returned?"

"Ngh…argh!" the Creator wailed, her remaining eyeballs blinking in unison as another coat of foul fluid secreted out of her. "I…I can't let you…! Even my greatest creation…is not worthy…!"

Rydia felt the child shift behind her. The maenad was watching the adult version of herself, her lower lip slack as if she had been interrupted mid-sentence. Sensing the child's stare, the adult maenad slowly turned around, their eyes locking.

The maenads we met earlier said they were one, Rydia thought to herself. Does that mean this little one saw everything her sisters saw while they were battling the Creator? She gritted her teeth, squeezing the girl's hand tighter. What could be possibly going through their minds right now?

The Creator's mouth fell open with a wet smack upon the crystalline floor, her charred, leathery tongue shooting out and snaking itself around the maenad's waist before she could even turn to see what was happening. A collective gasp rose from the party as the maenad was thrown to the ground and dragged across the tiles, kicking and screaming while being pulled into the Creator's maw. It did not go unnoticed that the Creator's dripping fangs were ensnared with strands of turquoise hair and splashes of blood, confirming the fates of the other maenads that had bravely intervened on their behalf.

"STOP!" Cecil cried, unsheathing the Lightbringer and shooting a flare of Holy magic square between the pair of eyes that were rolling in their sockets above the Creator's mouth. "That's your daughter…your last hope for your people to finally experience the future!"

But he was already far too late – the maenad was swallowed whole with a swift gulp, a small hand aglow with a glittering black aura the last trace seen before the Creator gnashed her teeth shut. The little girl suddenly broke away from Rydia, staggering forward and collapsing to her knees as she drank in the Creator's gratuitous digestion of her sister. Frozen in place, Rydia could only stare as the child lowered her head, weeping under her breath as she slammed her palms to the ground and a familiar, cold voice poured out of her.

"That child…is our future!"

"That's the mysterious girl's voice…" Golbez blinked. "How is she…?"

A piercing whistle streaked across the sky, interrupting his thought. He looked up, watching as a flaming ball of rock came racing toward them across the gardens, a glittering tail of fire and starlight scarring the obsidian space with a pulsing afterglow in its wake. Moments later, hundreds more joined it, filling the sky and enkindling the gardens with garish incandescence.

"Meteor!" he and Rydia called out at the same time – as masters of black magic, both of them handily recognized that spell. The first volley began to pound the Creator, a chorus of snapping bone and tearing flesh rising with the ash and billowing smoke of the spell's rampage.

The maenads…! Rydia gulped. They could even wield the forbidden black magic, Meteor…?

Rosa, finally satisfied that the Creator was distracted, folded her hands in prayer and lowered her head. The familiar, warm light of Teleport magic washed over her and the others once more, and she permitted her mind to go blank and free in the throes of the spell. She would carefully construct their destination in her consciousness one ingot at a time, and illuminate the blessed lanterns that would light their path with each exhalation of her breath.

"We're…glowing!" Edge gasped, raising his hands. Cecil's gaze immediately darted to Rosa, not being able to help but break into a wide smile.

"It's Rosa! She's trying to get us out of here…! Everyone, get close!"

"Come," Rydia sniffled, pulling the still-stunned little girl to her as the second wave of meteors that had been queued in the sky took their turn in the assault. They dashed past the Creator and the surrounding cluster of hovering rock, not able to bear even a peek to see what was left of her.

Rosa felt Cecil's arms wrap around her from behind and pull her into his chest – she would know that embrace anywhere, even if she had lost all of her senses – and she could feel the flutter of Ceodore's heartbeat against her back, too. A few seconds later, she felt the others scramble to take hold of her arms and legs and each other, her eyes snapping open as a pillar of light smashed into them from above. It was faint, but she could hear the voices of their friends calling out to them in the light, begging them to come home – their prayers had broken through the staggering, twisted dimensions of the True Moon and had paved their road to freedom.

"It's working…!" Rosa whispered, her voice fading away as the world around her became drowned in white. Cecil sank into her dissipating form, his eyes drifting shut as the Creator's voice danced over the last twinkling motes of light that burst behind his eyes.

"Th... Thank... Thank you..."

"Thank you all!"

---

Agart

Now, maybe I can finally get some sleep, the scholar thought to herself, the mattress sinking beneath her backside with an agonizing groan. She had been up with Cory for the gods knew how long, measuring the movement of that dread moon in alternating shifts and wracking her sleep-deprived brain with mathematical calculations that would help them determine how long they had until it inevitably breached their orbit.

The number they had arrived at when all was said and done was of no comfort to her – it was hours, not days, that they had left until the collision, and Cory was fully convinced that no living being on their planet would ultimately survive.

"Certainly, there will be some people still left standing at first," he had depressingly droned on over his twentieth cup of coffee as she stared, dead-eyed, into the microscope and tried to concentrate on the measurements she was taking. "But it won't be long until the environment becomes unhospitable – water supplies will be contaminated, the planet will probably be knocked a few miles out of its orbit – that should be just enough of a difference for the sun to either be too far and we'll freeze to death, or too close and we'll all burn…oh, and the ultimate wild card, of course…"

"Which would be…?" the scholar asked irritably, setting down her pencil. She knew he wouldn't actually continue his little speech until she engaged.

"Humanity. We tend not to do well in crisis situations like this. The surviving population will probably fall to a war over resources before the environment kills them off, anyway."

"And that's my cue to get some sleep," the scholar groaned, standing up from the telescope. If she was going to have any chance of becoming a war-ravaged scavenger in this horrible new tomorrow, she needed her beauty rest. "May I be excused?"

And that was when she had made her way downstairs to the tiny bunk area for Cory's interns and staff, a journey she already couldn't remember making thanks to her utter exhaustion. Just as her head hit the pillow, she heard a dramatic shriek tear across the observatory that made her sit straight up, her heart pounding a mile a minute in her ear.

"My goodness!"

Damnation, Sir Cory! she silently scowled. I'm going to be the one that kills you – not this moon or the planet – if you don't let me sleep! She took a deep, cleansing breath, soothing her rage with visions of stabbing Cory over and over again with her pencil and calling back to him in her "best behavior" voice.

"What is it, sir!?"

"The moon! L-look at it now!"

"Ugh…" She shook her head, reaching over for the curtains next to her bed and throwing them open. She wasn't sure why she had bothered to keep them closed – it was now so dark outside that they had been rendered useless – but she supposed that just because the world as she knew it was coming to an end, didn't mean she actually had to watch it go down.

She was half-expecting to see a swell of white blind her before the moon crashed directly into Agart – it would, rather ironically, she thought, being a burgeoning astronomer and all – be the last thing she saw before her demise, and that would be that – game over, the end, try again next time.

But instead, she was greeted by something far more extraordinary – she was so confused by what she saw that she not only rubbed her eyes and pinched herself to be sure she wasn't dreaming, but also rubbed her sleeve over the pane of glass, in case it had some weird film that was making her see nonsense. With all that done, she peered outside again, only to see exactly the same scenery: The twin moons were hanging in the sky, but the smaller, newer moon was shrinking in size by the second – just in the time she had looked away to pinch herself, it had already decreased in diameter by several inches.

It's…moving away from us? She wondered, pressing her palms to the window and taking in a sharp breath. And quite rapidly, too… Moments later, a thin curve of light illuminated in the sky, emerging shyly from behind a wall of darkness.

It was the sun.

---

Rydia shook her head one last time for good measure, silently reaching for the switch on the panel that would shutter the window she had been staring out of for the gods knew how long. She had kept wandering over to it as she paced on the bridge, not able to believe for more than five seconds that her eyes were not deceiving her before going back to check on it again. She could tell that Luca was getting irritated with her – every time she opened that particular shutter, it released a spill of silver light that distracted Luca from her position in the cockpit where she was trying to steer them home. She had begged Golbez to override the newly-restored Crystal of Flight's controls so she could take the Lunar Whale for another, decidedly less-stressful, spin – and much to everyone's surprise, he offered her a half smile and conceded without argument. Rydia was sure that Luca's being accommodated was the only thing buoying her mood enough to keep her from launching her axe at Rydia's head.

"It's really leaving, isn't it…? The moon…" Rydia murmured. Her fingers were twitching anxiously, inches away from the switch. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt someone's breath on her neck behind her, and whirled around, only to see Edge staring at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Do I have to tie you up?" He grinned down at her hands, and Rydia flushed, her hands fluttering behind her back.

"That is not necessary."

He shrugged, his smile fading only a little as he gazed to the ceiling. "You think the Creator sent it away for us, just before the whole thing fell apart?"

"Maybe not for us," Kain frowned. He was standing across from them, perched against the railing that rose between the control panel and the Crystal of Flight. When Rydia looked up at him, his face was a splendor of golden light – she was briefly taken aback by how noble he looked. "In the end, maybe she wanted to save her daughter after all…that child would have been wiped out with the rest of the maenads if we had not intervened. Perhaps the Creator grew a conscience in those final moments and understood that the child's best shot at survival would be if she came to the Blue Planet."

"I didn't think of it that way…" Rydia trailed off. The door to the bridge slid open, and Cecil and Rosa stepped inside. And behind them, bone-weary but smiling, was Ceodore.

"Ceodore!" Rydia exclaimed, running to him and pulling him into a big hug. "You're finally awake!" He laughed as he sank into her, patting her back.

"Hi, Rydia!" he pulled away, looking up at her curiously. "Hey, I just realized…you cut your hair, didn't you? Did that happen while you were fighting the Creator?"

"No," Rydia huffed, crossing her arms. "It was well before you decided to take your little nap! Boys are totally oblivious, aren't they?" Rosa giggled, and Cecil quickly looked away, pretending to find something on the wall very fascinating. He hadn't noticed a thing, himself…

"Well, in his defense, your hair is always a massive ball of knots, so who would notice if a foot or two was gone?" Edge snorted. Rydia gasped, spinning on her heel and raising her fist.

"Take that back! I thought you said you liked long hair on girls?"

"I…I do!" Edge stammered, turning red. "…Wait, when did I say that? I don't remember…"

"About sixteen years ago, jerk face!" Rydia hissed. "We were in Cecil's throne room – it was just before he came down and told us Rosa was pregnant! Of course, you were probably three sheets to the wind by then…I seem to remember you being very intimate with a bottle of champagne."

"Oh, yeah," Edge blinked. "…You actually listened to me?"

"…I wasn't growing it out for you!" Rydia flushed. "But yeah, I remember what you said…but only because I don't have the memory of a goldfish. It's not a big deal!"

"…Edge and Rydia were there when you found out you were having me?" Ceodore smiled, his voice rising slightly to account for the bickering that had started to escalate behind them. "What was the occasion?"

"Nearly everyone was there that night! But it's a long story, dear," Rosa sighed, patting him on the head. "One your father can tell you some time – I wasn't around for most of it. Being pregnant with you was not exactly a picnic."

"Jeeze," Ceodore pouted. "I don't need to hear about that."

"Heh…" Rosa shook her head, pressing her fingers to her lips. "But now that I think about it…that was really when all this began, wasn't it? I never imagined that the crystals were created for that purpose, and that the Creator had us in her sights even all that time ago…I'm still in shock."

"What does this mean for the future of our crystals?" Kain frowned. "Their master is gone…along with all those other crystals in the graveyard that we couldn't save. But the light has not left our eight crystals since we fled the moon. And then we come back here to the Lunar Whale, only to find that the Crystal of Flight is restored as well… It's like none of this ever happened."

Cecil shook his head. "I have been wondering about that myself since we escaped. I almost feel as if it's not a matter of the crystals themselves. Regardless of their true purpose, it does not change the fact that they have always been a tool to our people…just like my sword or our magic."

"So, like any tool, it all depends on how we decide to use them, doesn't it?" Ceodore asked, and Cecil nodded.

"Where are the crystals now?" Cid called from across the room. He had been helping Luca co-pilot, being surprisingly reserved in his directives to her – so much so that they had forgotten he was in the room. When the seven of them had suddenly appeared on the Lunar Whale in the literal middle of Palom and Porom's prayer session, Cid had gotten so excited just to see them alive that he forgot to inquire if they had rescued the crystals or not.

"Golbez gave them back to their respective guardians," Rosa smiled. "Palom and Porom have the Crystal of Water, Edward and Harley the Crystal of Fire, Leonora the Crystal of Earth, Yang and Ursula the Crystal of Wind…"

"…And Calca and Brina are keeping watch over the Crystals of Darkness!" Luca chimed in. "They're tucked in with that little girl you found, having a slumber party."

Cid raised his eyebrows. "Ah, yes…the little…what did you call her?"

"She's a maenad," Rydia explained, her face falling as she lowered her head. "…The last of her kind, now."

"She is a cutie," Cid smiled. "Think she'd be interested in my Mid?"

"I…I can't even imagine how she would respond to that," Rydia murmured, and Edge laughed.

"Cid, if you want your grandson to learn how to be a lady-killer…you know only who to ask."

"Sure," Cid said dryly. "But it's nobody on this ship."

"Ouch," Edge groaned, but was still grinning like a fool. "I'll let that go, for now…on account of my being in such a generous mood after saving your arse…yet again!"

"Excuse me, you little punk!?"

"Sorry…but I'm starting to feel sleepy already," Ceodore yawned, making no attempt to cover his mouth as Edge and Cid started getting into it in the background. "I think I'm going to try to get some more rest before we get home."

"Good idea," Cecil nodded. "There will be a lot for us to do if our last conversation with the chancellor of Damcyan was any indication of what happened while we were gone."

"Are you sure you're OK otherwise, dear?" Rosa fretted, pressing her palm to Ceodore's forehead. "We still don't quite understand what the Creator did to you and Golbez…"

"I'm fine, Mother," Ceodore squirmed out of her grip. "Honestly. The whole time I was gone…I could still hear you and Father, and all the others, calling out to me, giving me strength…I never felt alone. I'm just sorry that I wasn't able to help more."

"You've done quite enough," Rosa sighed. "Now go on – get to bed. We'll wake you when we're home."

Home…! Ceodore smiled as he turned to exit the bridge. Never has that word rung so sweetly in my ears…

He waved to the others as he passed them by in the commons – everyone was clustered in different conversations that seemed to blend into each other, the hope in the air so buoyantly thick that Ceodore was tempted to do a little leap into the air and pretend to grab some of it. The only thing that stopped him from his random outburst of joy was a pair of cool, champagne-tinged eyes he spotted watching him covertly as he drifted by. He offered a secret smile, not being able to help himself, and Ursula blinked, the corner of her mouth twitching as she quickly spun away and gave her full attention back to her conversation with Edward and Harley.

I think I get why Ursula likes teasing me so much now…it's kind of fun! I could get the hang of this…

In the bunks, he passed by several occupied rooms – he knew the child Rydia had rescued was in one of them with Luca's dolls, and remembered how Porom had practically assaulted him as soon as he stepped into the hallway with one of her soft hugs that made him feel fluttery in his chest before she herself had retired. But a final room before the one he had claimed for himself had a door half-way open, and he noticed a towering figure in black paused at the room's porthole, lost in a trance – his eyes were reflective pools of starlight, the very essence of the cosmos themselves.

He has the same exact look Father gets on his face when I catch him staring at the moon…

"Golbez?" Ceodore asked before he could stop himself, halting in front of the gap in the threshold. Golbez turned, one eyebrow raising as he took in his visitor.

"Ceodore. You're awake."

"Not for long. Just visiting with the others on the bridge took a lot out of me."

"As is typical with that particular group of individuals," Golbez smirked, and Ceodore couldn't help but choke out a laugh. Even if his parents and their friends hadn't met Golbez under such…acrimonious…circumstances, Ceodore didn't have a hard time believing that their personalities were such a clashing mix that they were still fairly happy with keeping each other at an arm's length when necessary to preserve the peace.

"So…" Ceodore scratched his head, his eyes nervously darting to the ground when he realized Golbez expected him to do something other than laugh awkwardly – he had been the one to interrupt the man, after all. "…I just wanted to thank you…for what you did. I don't remember much, but…my parents said you went after me when I fell under the Creator's spell."

"I did," Golbez said, resting his hand on his hip. "But it's nothing you have to thank me for. I'm afraid I wasn't very successful in stopping her from getting her claws into you."

"T-That doesn't matter!" Ceodore burst, clasping his hand over his mouth when he realized he had practically shouted – someone might come running if they heard him over the buzz in the commons, and he had wanted it to just be him and Golbez for a little while longer. "…I just mean…er… You didn't have to, but you did. At great danger to yourself, I might add. So…thank you."

Golbez tilted his head, and Ceodore could see the tendons in his neck tensing. "You are my kin, Ceodore – and I know too well the dangers of carrying even a drop of Lunarian blood in one's veins. No matter the Creator's intentions, I couldn't risk history repeating itself once more – I would never be able to forgive myself."

"History repeating itself?" Ceodore blinked. "What's so dangerous about Lunarian blood? I don't understand…"

Golbez sighed, pressing his fingers to his temple. "…Cecil really hasn't told you anything about me, has he?"

"N-No…" Ceodore stammered. "You and Kain…were both sore subjects, to put it kindly."

"Then I'm not sure it's my place to explain," Golbez frowned. "I don't want to give anyone the impression that I'm trying to exude any influence over your perception of me."

"But…" Ceodore shook his head. "You don't even know what my perception of you is – you've never bothered to ask. You've been acting like when this is all over, you're just going to go away again." He paused, realizing his voice had jumped a few octaves during those last few words. "…Are you?"

"I can't possibly answer that right now. We don't even know the state of the planet we're returning to."

"…Right. Of course," Ceodore muttered, his hand sliding down the doorframe as he turned to walk away. Why had he even bothered? "…Just understand this: I may not know everything that happened in your past, but I acknowledge that I only have one side of the story. I would welcome an opportunity to change my perception…but only if it meant the truth." He chewed his lower lip, bowing his head. "It's not right…that the crystals themselves know more about my kin than I."

"Ceodore…" Golbez began, but he had already taken his leave, purposely slamming the switch outside the frame so that the door closed the rest of the way behind him. Shrouded in gossamer shadow, Golbez turned back to the porthole, his eyes narrowing at the startling glint of the starlight against the backdrop of the now-lightless chamber.

Within his hand, he clutched the surviving shard of the Lunarian's final crystal until the warm spill of blood traced his palm, splashing on the floor.