"I want to do something to help. Are you sure there's not-"
"No."
Bright pinpoints of light dotted the sky, the only feature that separated the black sky from the abyss they travelled over. He looked back at his travelling companion. He had trouble focussing, the smooth rocking of the train threatening to send him to sleep. Can you even sleep in a dream? Would you just wake up? "Why not?"
A finger waggled at him reproachfully. "This is a private conversation we're having Squall." The being turns to look out the window. With the desert far behind and the stars providing no real shine their only light comes from the tepid gas-lamps inside the train carriage, throwing off shadows in every direction. He's tried to get a good luck at whoever it is he's sitting across from but every time some small bend in the track they're on will throw the shadows a different way and he's thwarted. After a decade of military training he's beginning to wish that a week or two had been devoted to lucid dreaming because the last five nights from the Ragnarok leaving Deling to their arrival in Esthar it's the only one he's been having, and it's starting to worry him.
The woman in the back of the carriage, so far as he can tell the only other passenger in the carriage, has ceased crying and now all that comes from behind him is a low muffled sob. The name of the grieving passenger is tapping at the back of his mind like an insistent woodpecker, but he can't quite, can't quite reach in and grab it. He wants to stand up and go back there and ask, but something's keeping him in his seat, and he's not sure whether it's the ghostlike fellow traveller in front of him or some other outside impulse. He keeps his seat.
"So, how have you been?"
Why not? It's not like this will even be the strangest or stupidest thing that he's ever done. Talking with a ghost he can barely see. "It's pretty unsettling. We've had reports of attacks across the world. On their own they'd be small fry, but put them all together and it's beginning to look like something a lot scarier."
"Co-ordinated attacks?"
He shakes his head as he looks out of the window, trying to find some, any, feature in the black land. "Not yet. Deling City's pretty much on lockdown-"
"No change there then."
He shrugs. "True, but this time the civilians almost demanded it of the soldiers. Fujin and Raijin are helping with that. Dollet and Timber have seen a few of these shadow-people but no attacks, just black shapes on hills. Scouts, maybe."
"Esthar?"
Is it his jumpy dream-nerves, or can he hear a slight note of urgency in their tone? "No, no attacks in Esthar yet, but Laguna's taking no chances, he's already moved a battalion to reinforce the city militia." He leaned back in the comfortable leather-backed seat. It really was a very nice ride. "And of course the one thing everyone notices; it's always people they know."
Suddenly he realises how cold the train carriage is. For a moment he wishes he'd brought a jacket, one of the thick Trabian ones Selphie gave them last time they were at T-Garden, but his rational mind kicks him for thinking such a ludicrous thought.
"People they know, or people they remember?" the shadow asks him.
"Does it matter?"
If he could see the person's eyes he knows they'd probably be narrowing at him. "It always matters Squall, didn't that get drilled into you enough by your trainers?" The figure shifts nervously. "You need to have a long think about what you know Squall."
"What we know is nothing," he shoots back. He raised a hand and started ticking off points on his fingers as he talked. "Something captured and killed Alexander, a very powerful Guardian. Something managed to enslave Shiva, another very powerful Guardian. Something is creating these shadow-soldiers and is sending them out to kill people I care about." He could feel the anger in his voice as he went on. "They look like people we used to know, or that we remember seeing. We don't know who's doing it or what for or where to start looking." He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms as he spat out the final words. "So any help you can give would be appreciated." He looked outside the window. The stars were more numerous than they had been; as if they were beginning to leave the black void they had entered what seemed like nights ago. Faint washes of colour were beginning to return to the land but hesitantly, as if testing the waters before committing themselves to bringing light back to that barren landscape outside the train.
"You already have all the pieces Squall. You're just not putting them together very well." A sigh, and then: "You always did need someone to get you moving." A pause. "What do you remember about Quistis Trepe?"
He can feel something in the figure's voice and he doesn't like it. Like a screw being tightened. "What do you mean?"
"Just an image Squall, just an image. What do you remember when you think of her? No hesitation, first thought that comes into your mind. Answer the question!"
And the word came out: "Blood." There had been so much blood, and no sign of the body it had came from. Old fears came rushing up out of the not-so-ancient past at the image: I will not become a memory. "But I don't see what-" His voice cut off as suddenly the figure coalesced before him and he was staring into Quistis' eyes. But not the clear blue eyes he remembers from the good times. The eyes that stare out at him now are cracked and veined like a dead fish.
"Don't look away."
Squall sat eyes rooted to the spot as a line of red trickled down the ghost's forehead. As he watched the trickle turned into a steady stream, into a torrent of blood that flowed down over her face like a curtain. When she spoke it was a death-rattle coming out of a ruined throat. "Not her. Just an image. Don't look away."
Like a film exposed to the fire Quistis dissolved before him as ragged holes and tears appeared on her body and wept blood. He tried to look away but found himself frozen like a statue and forced to watch the hideous display as the red flowed down her decaying body and pooled around them on the floor and the table. He could hear a dull ringing in his head that felt as if some metal plate was being hammered onto his skull. The ghost shaped like his sister sat forward and her stained eyes looked into his as the sound increased to an insane volume.
"Give my love to…the songstress…"
And then mercifully the world faded into white, and only one woman's voice could be heard.
"Squall? Squall!"
He bolted up as if the bedclothes below him were electricity. "Rin?" He turned to look at his wife, concern shining out of her face at him.
"You were practically screaming in your sleep Squall, what's the matter?"
He collapsed back onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. "A nightmare. Just a nightmare, that's all."
Rinoa stared at him unconvinced. "You're a terrible liar."
He shook his head and glanced out of the window, before remembering their room was deep inside the presidential palace. Laguna had been resolute. "It's just been hard sleeping."
"Why?"
He folded before her relentless advance. "Well…" He told her everything. He kept watching her expression as it went through patience, to disbelief, to mild irritation, to thoughtfulness as he talked. Finally he finished, and just looked at her. Well?
Rinoa sat back in the bed and sighed. The silence stretched to breaking point. "It sounds…I don't know. But that's not normal Squall, I know that, okay." She slid out of bed and walked over to the wardrobe. He opened his mouth to ask but she beat him to it. "Get dressed, we're going to wake up the others."
"Rin, I really don't think it's a big deal. We've all been under a lot of stress, it's probably n-"
She spun around to look at him. "Don't say it's nothing Squall." He reached out to her and she brushed his hand away as she dressed. "We've been through too much for that." She brushed a tear from her eye. "Laguna's flashbacks, time compression, wherever Shiva took us through from Deling to Garden, so don't just say these dreams are normal!" She was practically shouting at him now.
He reached an arm across her and held her tight, and this time she didn't push him away. "It'll be fine, I promise." He felt her shudder next to him.
"Quistis said the same thing Squall and then she died. She just…that morning she was with us and we were all together and then the next day…I just can't take that. I had her blood on my hands Squall. I'm not going to let it happen again, just because we didn't think it was anything." She shook her head as if trying to dislodge the images within. "Is this all there is now, for us?" She turned and looked into his eyes. "Just one crisis after another and we're all just…worn away one by one?"
"That won't happen Rin." He felt a tightness in his chest as he answered her. "I promise. I won't allow it." Hyne, if all the priests and old wives' tales are right and you really are up there, of all the promises I've made in life let me keep this one.
The knock at the door ended their discussion, and Rinoa pushed Squall away to answer it.
"Yo."
When Rinoa answered Seifer the fear in her voice had vanished. "You're Laguna's errand boy now?"
The man shrugged. "Nothing better to do until nightfall. Speaking of which…"
Get some sleep. We're all night owls from here on out, had been Laguna's response after greeting them. We're going to have a lot more of this ahead of us before we're through with this, I can feel it in my bones. Rest, we'll talk again at sundown.
Squall caught Rinoa looking at him pointedly and sighed. "We've had some trouble. I've. Had some trouble." He sighed inwardly as the familiar smirk spread across Seifer's face and cut him off before he could speak. "Go wake up the others, we've got some things to say."
The smirk faded as Seifer stared him down. "You've been seeing something." Squall nodded without asking how he knew. Everyone already knew the story about Ellone. After that there was very little any of them were willing to dismiss out of hand. The blonde man checked his watch. "Well, we have a few minutes 'till sunset. Let's get to work."
"Still not adjusted huh?"
Kiros smiled grimly and nodded at Zell as he took a long draw from his cup. Those who hadn't been in on the ground floor – so to speak – were still adjusting to the schedules of those who had arrived on the Ragnarok. Even Zell Selphie and Irvine, who had at least been able to rest with Esthar's troops on their doorstep, were trying to stay awake.
If they attacked now they'd find half of us asleep, Squall thought ruefully as he tapped the table. Truth be told he'd have preferred to do this some place other than the presidential palace but Laguna had insisted that none of them should leave it during the night, and to be honest he hadn't argued with the quasi-order too hard. Only himself, Rinoa, Seifer and Siren were anywhere near ready to fight. Li, Leonard and Almas had went back to Dollet, to prepare their own city for whatever storm was coming to their shores.
"So what's this all about Squall?" Alone among his staff the Estharian president looked alert and focussed as he stared at Squall across the room.
Squall cleared his throat as tired gazes swung to face him. "Well…" He told them as much as he dared, leaving out details wherever he could, although he could have swore there was a slight smirk on Irvine's face when the tall cowboy saw Rinoa blushing to his side.
"Dreams and nightmares huh?" Zell said as he looked out at the sunset, the bright disc in the sky edging down closer to the horizon, sliced into thin slivers by the Esthar skyscrapers. "Sounds familiar."
Kiros shook his head, as if all the talk of unreal things was just some irrational children jumping at shadows. Of all the people in the room save Laguna he knew best the power of dreams that he himself had once been subjected to. "I don't understand," he said. "I guess I've just grown too old for this magic show." He waved away Selphie's protests. "I prefer things I can touch."
"You can touch these things Kiros, they're real enough trust me," Seifer muttered, looking out of the windows as the final rays of light disappeared from the skyline. Even though the window was airtight he imagined he could feel a cold breeze washing through the room. He stood and looked over at Squall. "I'm going down there. Let me know when we find some bastard I can kill to stop this, okay?" The others watched as he stalked from the room.
"Well, he doesn't waste time arguing points at least."
Squall felt Rinoa lean into him as he talked and felt better for the anchor. He felt lightheaded, like the air had been drained out of the room. "So what do we do now?" He looked around the room at the others. Everyone was tired and it made him irrationally angry. "I don't see where we can start with this."
"Can we take one alive?" Zell asked with a hopeful note in his voice.
Squall was about to spit a reply back at the man when he felt Rinoa's hand on his shoulder and calmed down. "I- No. No."
"Who's the songstress?" Selphie asked suddenly. She looked around at the others as they looked around. She shrugged. "It just sounded strange is all. I don't know anyone I ever called that. Squall?"
He copied the gesture. He had no idea either. He'd barely registered the phrase, only mentioning it for the sake of completeness. "No idea." He looked the window at the steadily-deepening darkness over the city. It reminded him of Deling. The swarms of tiny moving lights whenever he had stayed in Esthar were gone as people were told to stay indoors and close their shutters. They were replaced by only the dull black of empty streets. He felt a distant sadness at the scene, Esthar's lights had been one of the few constants in his life, unchanged even during the Sorceress and Esper Wars, and the message it sent of a cowed populace hurt him.
"I know who it is."
He was knocked out of his reverie as Siren spoke up for the first time during the meeting. The young woman – he had trouble even thinking of her as a Guardian anymore, so much she resembled any other person he knew, albeit with more grace than he knew he'd ever manage – looked back at them, and he noticed her hand seemed to almost unconsciously go to her neckline where a shining golden pendant hung. "Siren?"
"It's me."
"Long day sir?"
Seifer looked around at the young soldier. He looked barely out of his teens. "Something like that." He leaned against the walls of the palace and looked out over the now-dark city, only the bright still-lit pillars of the militia watchtowers visible at the city's rim. I'll never get used to this creepy city. For all the poise Seifer kept up in the presence of others and all Laguna's talk about the future of mankind there was something inhuman about Esthar that unnerved him. Maybe it was the sheer impersonality of the city, the uneasy feeling of being in a city he just wasn't suited for. Let Leonhart and Rinoa stay here in their metal cocoon, he'd choose Deling's gritty but oh-so-much-more real sights to the things he'd seen in Esthar. A passing Esthar soldier waved at him in the dark and he nodded back curtly, lost in thought. He still chafed being under Laguna's command, but he owed the man too much to simply walk away from-
Wait a minute. "Hey, you," he said to the man standing next to him as he turned to see the patrol that had just walked past him towards the palace.
"What's that sir?" the reply came in a respectful tone Seifer recognised all too well from watching people react to The Great Leonhart.
"Who were those guys who just passed us?"
"Guard change." The man frowned. "A bit early but…"
Seifer could have kicked himself. You idiot! What the hell are you doing standing around like a god damn rookie! "HEY!" he screamed, already turning to go after the passing Esthar patrol as they came out of the darkness and into the palace lights.
The darkness followed them, and then everything happened at once.
Seifer spun around to face the confused guard already lifting a finger to point in disbelief at the black shadow-soldiers as the one Seifer had addressed lifted a hand and waved at him
"Hey-"
as it reached down for it's weapon the same time as Seifer was looking past the young man at the alarm button on the wall and thinking too far to run as
"-that isn't-"
the black creature opened its mouth and made a hissing sound that made chills run down his spine, and he was reaching for his gunblade and gathering all his strength to
"-the patrol-"
hurl it as hard as he could. It swung past the guard and buried itself almost to the hilt in the alarm button and the sudden sound of sirens drowned out the thing's dull hiss as Seifer spun back to face the enemy
"-for this-"
as they drew their own weapons, and he was left unarmed facing them as the young Esthar guard finally finished his sentence.
"-night."
God damnit.
It seemed to Squall like he was jumping up almost before the alarm had sounded, like he had known somewhere in his soldier's heart this was coming.
"We're under attack."
Kiros reacted instantly but Laguna was faster and dodged out of the way before the black man could grab and drag him to safety. "Laguna…"
The president tapped a key on the wall and figures cascaded down the display. "Front entrance alarm." He looked up at the others. "They're here." He looked around and when next he spoke it was in a tone that brooked no argument. "Squall, Zell, go back up the entrance guards. Selphie, Irvine, patrol the city." He looked around. "Siren, Rinoa, with me. We're going to the labs."
"God damnit old man…" Kiros sighed in resignation and turned to whisper to an aide as footsteps pattered across the corridor outside the room. In the distance they could hear the dull whirr of massive machinery as barriers came down. "Swear to Hyne you'll be the death of me."
Laguna just grinned. "Quiet Kiros. Go find Ward and make yourselves useful." He looked around the table. "Let's go."
Zell went through the doors so hard they almost came off their hinges. "We're here to-" His voice trailed off as he caught side of the scene in front of him.
"Took your damn time."
Seifer threw aside the blade he was holding and it bounced across the door with a dull un-metallic thud. He wiped his hands off on his jacket, leaving black stains behind hat began to fade even as he stood up and walked towards Zell and Squall, who just stared.
The bodies of the shadow-soldiers lay scattered across the ground of the entrance lobby, decaying rapidly into nothing. One almost looked like it had cut in two, another as if some massive force had caved in its head (which, thought Squall, was probably what happened). All of them gleamed a sick black colour under the glow of the Esthar lamps.
"Over here."
The two men approached Seifer, and Zell drew back a step when he saw what he was looking down at. One of the creatures lay pinned to the wall by its own blade. "Is it…" He reached out a hand. The thing reacted whip-fast and a black hand shot out in a claw at Zell's face. "God's sake Seifer!"
Seifer ignored him as he motioned Squall closer. "Thought you might be interested in this one."
Squall stared down and it only took a second for recognition to cross his mind, albeit more a flash of annoyance rather than fear. They had crossed paths enough times for the face to be memorable, eve distorted and barely-recognisable through whatever magical black force was keeping the man together. "Biggs?" Not this asshole again.
Zell squinted and looked closer. "That guy? I thought he quit?"
"He did. But watch." Seifer kicked the creature and it responded with a flailing grasp for his boot and emitted a hiss that made Squall shudder.
"They talk?" Zell asked in distaste.
"Just this one." Seifer kicked it again and something in Squall's stomach rebelled at the rattling sound that emerged from the thing's excuse for a mouth.
"Just kill it." He looked away as Seifer obliged and tried to wrap his mind around what he'd just seen. He'd never really held any malice against Biggs or Wedge, two soldiers who'd had the bad luck to run into them more than the average Galbadian soldier and skilled enough to escape with their lives every time. Just a couple of scouts chosen to… "Seifer?"
Seifer was trying to pull the clothes from the dead man but his hands only came away with black handfuls of something that flowed through his hands like mud. Whatever they were made of lost its shape quickly after the 'mind' died. "Hmm?"
"You worked in Galbadia for a while. How did Galbadians set up diversions?"
"Well usually they sent a small force to distract the enemy while the main body went aroun…SHIT!"
The lab was a wreck. Whatever force had attacked it had been merciless and fast, faster than anything Rinoa had ever heard of. From leaving the presidential palace to arriving at the lab they had taken no more than five minutes. Whatever had burst in through those steel doors and slaughtered everything in sight was long gone. Her only thought now was seeing if there was anything left to salvage.
She ignored Siren and Laguna's pleas to wait and was running into the labs, head turning this way and that trying to look every way at once and at the same time none of the bodies. Still flashes came to her as she changed direction in the winding corridors and caught glimpses of thankfully still-masked soldiers pinned to the walls with white lances through their faceplates, or chests crushed into red pulp by the fist of an angry god. Finally the paths ran out and she stopped out of breath even as something in her heart shouted at her to keep moving.
"I SAID WAIT!" Laguna caught up, breathless, Siren trailing behind and looking worried. "Theres…nothing left…up here…" he gasped out. He leaned against the wall. "You kids these days…"
She took a deep breath to calm herself. "I'm sorry I just…" She tried to put her panic into words and failed. "Sorry."
Laguna smiled and risked a pat on the shoulder and then to the elevator controls. "Take it slow. Haste will get you killed." His steady voice and calm body-language didn't match the death scattered around them. Only his eyes that never stopped moving around the room and one hand tight on the machine-gun in his hand showed his true face. He stepped into the elevator as it arrived on the floor with a cheery ping, ignoring the bloodstains within.
Siren perked up as the metal box descended. "Do you hear that?"
The dull sound of fighting could be heard below, noises Rinoa could have went the rest of her life without hearing as metal collided with metal and the ever-present buzz of men shouting in anger and pain. As they went down the sound seemed to increase and almost resonate within her chest as she resisted the urge to put her hands over her ears, as if blocking the noise out would make it simply not be happening past the doors. She felt Laguna and Siren staring at her and realised she was breathing hard. "I'll be fine." She poised herself to jump out of the elevator as the tiny light ticked its way down to the bottom floor. She needn't have bothered.
Blood cascaded into the tiny box as the doors slid open and the Esthar soldier fell inside. Rinoa was already reaching down to catch him when she felt Laguna's hand on her lapel and was dragged away from the middle of the elevator as something invisible and fast went past her face close enough for her to feel the wind. The icicle lance smashed into the metal of the elevator and left a fist-sized dent as it shattered.
Laguna was already shouting. "Siren!" The woman nodded and suddenly the metal coffin was filled with lights. Laguna dragged Rinoa out of the elevator by her jacket while the enemy was (hopefully, please Hyne let her be) blinded, and was relieved when no more deadly shards were sent their way. "We have to get through to Odine's lab."
"Odine?"
"Who else would they be here for- Is that you?"
Rinoa looked around for the source of the hissing sound and met Shiva's blackened eyes. But where did she- She tried to move her hands to guard her face, move her legs to get away but her brain refused to move as she stared into those dead and soulless eyes and a hand reached out for her heart. Not like this.
"NO!" A fistful of light and force hit Shiva in the head and she reeled backwards as the Guardian threw herself across the room and into her 'sister'. Shiva's hiss turned into a screech and she jumped backwards, sending Siren into the wall with a bone-crunching thud. Siren gasped and fell back and barely missed the lance that swiped through the air near her head. The black Guardian was already drawing back for a second strike when Laguna's bullets finally found their mark, peppering holes across her body. Rinoa watched as her once-friend spun to shout a death-rattle at the man. It's not her anymore. She looked back and felt the power rising up inside but before she could do anything else Shiva was gone, with as much warning as her arrival, leaving a shaken Sorceress, a very confused Estharian president and a coughing and wounded Siren. The lightning-fast assault hadn't taken more than a few seconds.
"I don't believe it," Laguna muttered as he lifted a wincing Siren from the floor. Something in her body made a sick click sound and she cried out in pain. The sound of gunfire could still be heard from somewhere in the distance in that maze of laboratories and metal corridors. To Rinoa the entire complex seemed like one giant claustrophobic maze. "Rin, help Siren." Laguna checked his weapon. "I'm going to find Odine."
"Not alone, you-"
He cut her off. "I've been a soldier a lot longer than you Mrs Leonhart. Help your friend."
"How are you going to find him in this maze?" she asked.
Laguna shrugged. "I'll follow the screams."
The remnants of black shapes surrounded Odine's lab. Unfortunately for Laguna's sanity Odine wasn't in it.
"Ha! Take zat! And zis!"
He stopped in the corridor for a moment, gobsmacked beyond the ability to do anything but watch, as the devices in Odine's hands shot liquid death at the attackers. The black shapes attacking ignored the messy demise of their comrades and continued their mindless forward assault as first they were covered in something Laguna didn't recognise, and then the rough collection of metal in Odine's other hand shot lightning and the shadow-soldiers were consumed in fire. He could see the scorch-marks on the wall.
"Ah! Mizter Pressident!" Odine's deluge of fire only stopped for a moment as he saw him enter through the side door of the laboratory. Every surface of the room was covered in chunks of metal, wiring in all the colours of the rainbow, and bottles filled with some foul-smelling liquid he didn't even want to approach, never mind handle. "It'z good you are here, I wass almost out of fuel." The tiny scientist clicked off the harnesses holding the array of devices to his chest and bodily threw them down amongst the recovering attackers. Laguna didn't even need to be told to take cover, his hindbrain already telling him what anything Odine threw around was likely to do.
When the dust cleared and had Laguna had stood and brushed himself off it was to find Odine already packing. "Doctor, are you-"
"I'm fine! Which iz more than can be said for ze magical hordes!" Odine waved a hand behind him and Laguna followed it as far as he could see, which wasn't far. The explosion of whatever the man had been mixing had taken out the door to the lab, most of the corridor beyond, and anything that had been in it. All that remained was ruined steel and rock, with bloodstains and black sludge covering anything that had once been the floor. "Of course I am ready to leave, off we go." He patted a small backpack.
Laguna shrugged off the urge to demand explanations. They never helped. "I have to look for other-"
The doctor cut him off, not unkindly: "My dear leader I must regretfully say zat I am the only survivor. Zhey came when ze staff was asleep."
"Where were you?"
Odine looked at him like a parent telling a small child something he should have known. "In ze labs." Where else? his expression said. He brushed past Laguna. "I have vhat I need. Now, escape!"
Laguna found himself just shaking his head and following the man as he brushed his way past rubble and corpses towards the elevator where Rinoa was waiting and checked his watch. Dawn was still a very long way away.
"RIN!"
Squall felt his heart almost give out in relief as the steel doors slid aside to reveal Rinoa. She spun around at his voice and the look of fear on her face turned to joy. "Squall!"
Under any other circumstances he would have ran into her arms. He settled for a quick hug. "What's happening?" He looked down at Siren. "Are you both alright?"
"Shiva," was all Siren had to say weakly through gritted teeth.
Rinoa turned back to Squall. "We're waiting for-"
"Me!" Odine came around the corner laden with packs, Laguna behind and trying to look in every direction at once. Squall raised an eyebrow at the man. How many?
Less now, Laguna shrugged in response. "There were a few dozen in here," he began as they all crowded back into the elevator. "Odine managed to kill almost all of them using…you know what I don't even pretend to know what he makes down here."
"Just a few trinkets," the small man said offhand, as if hand-sized gadgets that could ruin buildings and kill by the dozen were mere toys. "Zis is our prize." He pushed a hand into the pack at his side and brought out a marvel.
The magikiller sphere was no longer just a grey shape in his hands, it's innate power to devour magic invisible to the human eye. Now it looked like it could work a miracle. Colours ran over the surface of the metal ball like oil on water, bouncing off some unnatural interior angle or turning in right-angles as if it was transparent and filled with interior partitions and walls. Even as Odine held it the colours seemed to almost bleed out of it and onto his palm. As he watched it seemed to drink up the light in the small elevator and throw it back out with twice the force until the small chamber was filled with multi-coloured light. Squall found himself abruptly lost in it as he stared. Siren averted her eyes and surreptitiously put Squall between herself and it.
"They were after it?" Laguna asked. His own eyes were locked onto the globe as well, but Squall could have swore there was distaste and not wonder in his eyes.
Odine tapped it. "Ze ozzer two have been stolen, ze smaller orbs. Logic dictates zhey would come for zhis one next."
Something in Squall's memory tapped at his brain to be heard. "Where were the other two sphere held?"
Odine looked up at the ex-Seed. "Dollet of course, ze Duchess requested zat she have one for-"
"And Galbadia?" The tiny tap was now an insistent pummelling.
A shrug. "Of course."
Squall's eyes met Seifer's and the other man nodded as the doors swung open. "That's what they were after. They wanted the magikiller device." He turned back to Odine. "Doctor what use could this stuff be? If you wanted to do something with it?" And had no morals.
The genius scientist looked thoughtful for a second. "Why, anything you wanted." He tapped the sphere again. "All ze prana of ze Garden alumni, ze Galbadian attackers, ze prana from ze Espers, Ze last Blue remnants of the late Mz Trepe, all of ze magical power zat was in ze world is now contained within. Zhat is why it glows so." He tossed it from one hand to another and Squall resisted the urge to just plain grab it from him. "Billions upon billions of particles. What could you do with it? Maybe you would want to pluck ze stars down from zhe sky? Maybe you dislike ze shape of ze world and would prefer it to be another? Maybe you wish to shape universes?"
"Maybe you wish to be gods?"
The full enormity of what Odine was saying broke through Squall's ignorance and screamed at him. Dear Hyne, all the magical power from everyone on Garden, all the power of the Espers. There's nothing we couldn't do with it. He looked down at the sphere in Odine's hand and the desire to just pick it up and throw it far, far away, to just somehow wash his hands of the whole bloody mess, was almost a physical thing. All the power in the world inside something small enough to hold. If other people know about this there'd be no end to war. He could look forward and see the glorious peaceful future he had envisioned crumbling before him. Everyone would want it; there'd never be a way to stop people wanting it. All it would take is one bad man to get hold of it and that would be it.
Then the other thought slid forward, like a brightly-coloured fish darting past a huge shark to get his attention, and his heart sank. Somebody already knows.
He put a hand on the short man's shoulder. "Odine, could what we're fighting be products of the stolen spheres? Someone using the power inside them to create these creatures and send them against us?"
The man shrugged. "Of course."
Laguna was the first to break the silence. "You're kidding." Squall could see the same thoughts running through Laguna's mind and coming to the same conclusion. Dreams and plans collapsing and re-focussing on the inevitable future, all based around the tiny object. Laguna went on: "Of course they are. Why wouldn't they be! God, I've been such a fool."
To the surprise of the others it was Seifer who spoke up to defend the man: "Laguna, you couldn't have known that-"
"I gave them away! Hyne, what was I thinikng? I could have just kept them all here, kept them safe in Esthar but- DAMNIT!" He kicked the wall hard enough to leave a dent in the metal. He took a deep breath and when his eyes opened there was something colder and harder in them. "When we get back to the palace we're making a list. Of people who knew. I'm not going to let this one go." The ice in his voice made Squall wince. Until something else made him want to shiver.
"That's far enough."
They stopped dead at the voice that came from the darkness of the lobby ahead. Between them and the doors.
Black shapes coalesced out of nothing in front of them and Squall saw Shiva's outline holding one of her icicle-lances. The second figure stood cloaked in blackened rags, but for all that Squall could see the menace radiating from the hidden figure, and the dull screech of old hate in its voice. His gunblade was ready behind him even before the shape had stopped speaking and the clicks and scrapes of moving meal behind him told him his friends and comrades were doing the same.
Shiva cocked her head sideways and stepped back, responding to some unheard command, as the cloaked figure stood forward and raised a hand, and Squall heard Rinoa gasp as the tattered rags fell away. Footsteps sounded across the room and more shapes appeared from the shadows. They were surrounded.
Raw flesh stood out blood-red in the darkness of the lobby, like someone had skinned it and done a terrible job. Discoloured veins pumped blood along the surface where blackened armour cracked and moved on the arm to reveal and obscure the hideous wounds. That was nothing to compare with the voice. In its dull hiss Squall could hear all the hatred of all the enemies he'd ever fought, all directed at him. He stepped forward in a trance, his brain denying something which his heart already knew was true.
"You."
The hand reached back and threw off the cloak into Shiva's arms. Whatever Squall had been prepared for it was worse. Like a man that had been skinned alive and then placed into a suit of armour and then put into an oven. Black metal moved with the rhythms of the thing's breath revealing red innards bright against the darkness of the outer layers. One eye was in the thing's head, the remains of some decorative outcropping at the top laying alone as the other half of the thing's face lay ruined as cracks and craters ran through the head and down and across the man's body. A black leather tatter of cloak extended from his and hung there swaying with his movement. Except it wasn't armour, or a cloak. It was back carapace and broken wings.
"You should have died in Garden," Squall whispered through gritted teeth.
"Ah, If only wishing would make it so," Diablos replied.