It was beautiful and disgusting, all at once.
Squall looked up at the walls of the palace, out of breath and panting. The climb had taken hours and it had been unlike anything he'd ever seen. Sometimes he'd looked down through the translucent crystal chains and seen clouds below him, other times there'd been ground inches away. Once he'd seen flat ground and for a second he'd been tempted to make the short hop from the massive floating links to the island, before common sense had stopped him. The island had fallen away into chunks instantly, things peering out from inside the pieces with red eyes and sharp talons. The sky had fractured around them and spat shards of what could have been rainbow glass onto them, and the chains had went between as wide s a highway to barely a finger's-breadth. They won't break, they can't, Old Rinoa had said confidently and had stepped forward onto it. Squall had held his breath waiting for the thin length to snap, but the old Sorceress had just smiled and walked on.
She wants to be free of the world, wants to fly high above it where it can't touch her. But a part of her wants to be back down there and won't let go. That is what this chain is, the old woman explained, looking at them all. You all awoke in what you wanted the world to be. But she is a Sorceress and the world is her, every facet of her mind. Every strength and weakness.
Squall thought this was precious little weakness but he'd kept his mouth shut as they climbed. Finally the chain had started to bank up and the going had gotten even harder, if never quite impossible. Finally they had been climbing almost vertically, and when he'd raised a hand and his palm slapped against a horizontal surface he'd have breathed a sigh of relief if he'd had the energy. He'd simply clambered up onto the grass, and waited there panting as everyone else hauled their way up and onto the grounds of the palace. And what a palace.
He didn't need anyone to tell him what he was seeing. The Dollet palace had been beautiful in reality, and still was now. But every surface shouted keep out. The wrought-iron fences were covered in sharp barbs and almost seemed to twisted as he watched. The corners of everything were just a little sharper than they should have been. He put up a hand against the massive golden door as lightly as he could and felt tingling as the metal shifted under his hand and brought out barbs. He looked up and it towered over them. Almas' fortress pretended to be a fairy-tale castle but was every bit as hostile as Ultimecia's castle had ever been. No, Ultimecia's castle was more honest about its evil.
"Now what, commander?" Xu asked, and Squall could hear the impatience there. She'd been one of the last to arrive and her eyes had been shining, a look in them that Squall hadn't seen since before the war. He'd had to think hard to remember when last Xu had seemed this…cheerful.
"We-" He didn't have a chance. The air itself seemed to vibrate as the doors slowly opened, making an unpleasant sucking sound as they slid across the grass that made Squall's skin crawl. The day was bright and the sun blazed as hard as ever, but somehow no light crossed that threshold.
Are we being invited?
By who?
"It's a trick," Zell said.
"Not if we know it is," Seifer said, tapping the point of his gunblade against the ground. He looked into the castle with impatience. Squall wondered if he'd be the same if he'd been with them last time. He was about to reply when he heard the noise. A tapping that wasn't coming from the reckless swordsman. He turned, realising how close he was to that darkness as someone came out of it.
The man…the boy really…couldn't have been older than twenty, but the expression on his face spoke of someone who had seen too much for his youth to handle. Squall met the eyes of the man and was struck by the thought I know you, but it was Xu that spoke first.
"Alec?" she said in disbelief.
The boy just nodded, glancing back into the depths of the palace before stepping out into the light. Even free of the shadows he looked haunted. "I knew you'd come."
"Why are you here?" Rinoa asked, her voice even more gentle than usual.
Even free of the shadows cast inside the massive building Alec Nuo looked like he was teetering on the edge of collapse. Even so he reached out a hand and Squall shook it. The gesture seemed too mundane for their surroundings. "It's my home. Even here." He laughed grimly. "I guess it is to her as well because I woke up and she was still in it." He looked up at Squall. "I knew you'd come for her though. Thank god."
"What's happening in there kid?" Irvine asked.
The question seemed to jolt Alec out of his half-reverie and he looked across at them all. "It's madness, I can't make sense of it." He shook his head. "I can't explain it. She doesn't know what she wants and it all keeps changing." He spoke on and painted a picture of the interior of the illusionary world inside the palace walls. Entire wings of the castle destroyed or re-built, rooms, doors, windows shifting around and the half-ghosts that populated the palace transforming from one thing to another as the Sorceress' mood shifted. Even the inner circle, the cultists that had come through and were permitted to dwell inside, weren't immune if they stepped into the wrong place at the wrong time. They had areas of the palace that belonged to them that stayed more-or-less the same, and they stuck to them.
"We're here to end it," Squall said. "Where are they?"
Alec pointed upward and to a man they followed his finger. As it went up the palace lost the old flat form it had had when it was built on Dollet's mountainside. Spires emerged out of the stone and twisted around each other, and in the centre something that could have been a giant egg or a twisted mass of thorns, covered in stained glass. "She's there, at the centre of it all."
"Where's Quistis?" Xu asked, quickly.
"The outskirts, I think," Alec answered, glancing back inside again. "It's like a storm, I don't dare get too close to the inner chambers. She's the only one who can go near her, I don't think even Morden dares."
"She's dangerously unstable. To be expected I suppose," Old Rin said thoughtfully, staring up at the edifice before them. "We were old women when we came into our worlds, and we knew what we wanted. This one is a child and she came by her power violently, without training, guidance, practise. No wonder her world is such chaos." The detachment annoyed Squall, just a little bit.
Rinoa – their Rinoa – must have thought the same way. "Is there anything we can do?"
"This."
Squall didn't have time to react, as Old Rinoa grabbed her younger self and without a thought pushed past Alec, over the boundary of the doors and into the castle. The effect was immediately. He felt like a bomb had gone off inside his head, someone screaming into his ear from a centimetre away. He fell to his knees and felt…something…fly over his head and out into the air around them. It was like a weight had been placed onto his back and he knew if he turned onto his back he'd see furious eyes staring down at him from the sky. Instead he just sat there on the ground as the chaos rolled around them. Rinoa had been right. This was nothing like Ultimecia. For all her insanity the witch had known what she wanted, and her castle while madness had been a structured madness. This was the opposite.
"Holy shit," Seifer breathed as he picked himself up.
"We have to go into that," Selphie said in awe, not really a question. Turning and walking away was something that just didn't enter their minds.
Squall looked at the two Rinoa's on the other side of the door. The older looked out with a questioning glance, asking well, when are you going to join us? His wife looked no less determined. He saw a hand reaching down to him and was hauled to his feet by Laguna.
"You ready?" his father asked.
Ready as we'll ever be, Squall thought as he stood a step away from the entrance. The darkness was all he could see, and the twin sparks that were Rinoa and her older version standing inside waiting for them. In that uncertain darkness they glowed.
He looked at his friends as they stood one step behind him, waiting on his cue. He was about to open his mouth to speak, to ask if they were sure, but Zell beat him to it.
"Right behind you."
He shrugged, and stepped forward, and it all went to hell.
Help
It's dark.
It's dark and I can't find my way out.
He felt like if he opened his mouth he'd cough up blood, like if he so much as breathed wrong his body would fall apart. A second ago he had been placing one foot in front of the other, following Rinoa and Squall as together they stepped across the threshold of this crazy goddamn place. Now he didn't know where he was. His eyes were telling him he was somewhere else while the rest of his body fought to catch up. His eyes adjusted to the gloom slowly, and Irvine found himself in a maze, facing down a long black hallway towards nothing, towering blocks of something going off to either side. It looked like a familiar sight but he couldn't think where from. As he adjusted further to the gloom he saw a figure in the distance, a figure that sent chills down his body.
No, it couldn't be. Impossible.
He tried to move sideways out of view and was rewarded by his still-not-in-sync legs by a wild lurch behind one of the towering walls, which rained down sharp objects onto his head. He heard the dry rustle of paper and realised he was surrounded by toppled books from the library shelves around him. He heard a sharp clang as his rifle hit the ground and winced at the noise.
"Hello? Was that one of you guys?"
Hyne if you're up there thank you. Selphie's voice rang out like a clear bell in the darkness, it bounced from the walls and bookshelves and he had no idea where it was coming from. For a moment he felt a gust of relief that it had been her he'd seen down that long dark space, but it vanished when he realised it couldn't have been, not with that silhouette. He wanted to jump out from his dark little corner find her and pull her to the ground. What little light in the massive library – he had no idea what was causing it – was scattered and random, throwing up pools of light in the room and falling away to almost total darkness. The next voice to speak in that dark place wasn't Selphie's.
"I know you are there."
Wherever Selphie was in the room she must have heard it to because the faint footsteps faded the instant that commanding voice spoke up. Whatever night-vision Selphie had developed in Trabia's long dark night it was certainly better than his, because it was her who found him. Irvine felt her fingers against his back, not reassuring, but a message tapped out. One of Garden's codes, one he hadn't used in so long he had to think hard to decipher it. When he did so it was direct and mirrored his own thoughts.
Run?
Irvine laid a hand on Selphie's forearm and the two held a silent conversation as sharp tack noises sounded up and down the corridor, as the third occupant of the room paced it. She was looking for them.
No map, he responded back. He had no idea where he was. The shadows in the room made his eyes water. He had to concentrate hard but he could see them shifting. Wherever he and Selphie had been taken it must have been near the storm Rinoa had talked about. He remembered the Dollet library being between the inner and outer wings. If they were this close to the centre he had no idea what to expect.
Fight?
No, he tapped back instantly.
"More phantoms to haunt me?"
The shadow moved around the corner and he saw them searching as his breath froze in his throat. Two shining blue jewels in the dark. For a second he thought Quisty but the shape was all wrong. A little taller, a little thinner. He suppressed a gasp as Selphie tapped out on his arm hard enough to sting-
mothers
-and then before he could stop her she had stepped out into the empty space between the bookshelves. Irvine felt a pull of warm air around himself and didn't have time to shout a warning, as red and orange covered Selphie like a flowing blanket, and suddenly the room lit up as fire surrounded the SeeD. When he took his hands away from his eyes he finally got a good look at the library.
He'd been right about the shadows. The walls twisted gently as he watched like a sheet billowing in the breeze. New bookshelves sprung into existence from nothing, meeting up and forming into a maze. He could glimpse titles in half a dozen languages and make sense of none of them. Books surrounded him where he had knocked into the shelf and the words on their open pages slid around his vision as he tried to look at them. The air was hazy with incense and his eyes watered as he looked up into a space bigger than Garden's quad. The ceiling just seemed to go up and up without end, the room larger than any cathedral he'd ever been in. They were close to one end, and Irvine could look past Selphie and the woman she faced and could see nothing of the other but a writhing mass of colour and angles.
Not that he had time to look for long, as Selphie faced down the woman and Irvine found himself just watching the conversation. He didn't know whether she was exerting some kind of unreal pressure on him or whether he was just frozen. He hoped it was the former.
"Mrs Aimsland?" Selphie asked hesitantly.
"Ah, not a ghost then," the woman replied, and for Irvine it clicked. The same hair, the same eyes, even something of the same stance there, as if Quistis had been just a softer, gentler echo of this person. Irvine had even seen her before, a picture in Esthar's history books of a woman used and then discarded. Imalia Aimsland the senior. She stared Selphie down and everything about her was hard and sharp, even the voice. "You do not belong here then. Maybe we can assist each other."
"How?" Selphie asked.
A hand swept to encompass the entire room, books and lights and shifting walls and all. "This strange palace, I don't know how I got here, or how to leave. People come and go but they're not real and won't answer my questions. I ask my family but they refuse to give me a straight answer." Those cold eyes stared down at Selphie. "What has happened?"
You're a ghost too. You were executed by a madwoman before any of us were born and now your little family's brought you back to soothe his own ego. You've been created out of time and you don't even know it. He felt sorry for her, this shade of an older life. There was no way she could know she wasn't real.
Selphie was more diplomatic. "Your family, a man called Morden-" She coughed. The stare must have getting to her as well. Irvine could feel daggers pricking at his mind, trying to get in. Quistis used her Blue magic like a sledgehammer. The mother wielded it like a surgeon's knife. Selphie started again. "Morden is your grandson, he-"
A look of surprise replaced the regal detachment at the words. "A grandchild? I don't remember… you mean my son escaped Esthar?"
Irvine knew Selphie wouldn't have the heart to tell this ghost that her family hadn't escaped permanently, had found their end underground at the hands of a desperate group of greedy generals. "Yes, his name is Morden. He found a Sorceress, and-" Selphie found herself cut off again.
The woman slapped her forehead and hissed, like something that should have been obvious finally occurring to her. "Oh, of course. Time Compression." She sighed in annoyance. "That old dream." Her eyes slid sideways as Irvine finally stepped from behind the shelves. Not as if he could have taken her by surprise. "Your husband joins us."
Selphie blushed. "He's not my-"
"Maybe not now, but soon," the woman teased. "I can see it." The grandchild had inherited that smile as well. "What do you intend to do with this little mess? Clean it up I assume?" She turned and walked back to where Irvine had first seen those eyes, which in the light of the Selphie's blaze turned out to be a leather chair surrounded by a pile of books.
"Yes," Selphie answered. Ifrit's light still glowed around her. She looked like a fiery little angel. "We have friends to need to rescue."
"Good luck to you."
Irvine though was surprised and showed it. "You don't want to keep things like this? I thought you…err…I thought Blue Mages served Sorceresses?"
"I have no wish to live a lie," the real Imalia Aimsland replied forcefully. "If my family hasn't learned from their mistakes I see someone will have to teach them." She picked up a book from the pile. She looked over at Irvine and Selphie again. "They are my family and I will not fight them, but nor will I stand in your way. Who are you, if I may ask? It takes great fortitude to remain yourselves in a world of dreams."
She's like us, he thought. "We're SeeDs," Irvine answered. "We're a group who stop things like this from happening. Supposed to, anyway."
Imalia smiled. "A noble goal. Our masters are never quite wise with their power, it takes people like us to keep them in check." She hesitated for a second, and then… "How are my children? Are they…"
Irvine thought before he spoke. "You have a granddaughter, a SeeD like us. She has your power and she's amazing. We haven't met anyone else in here."
"What's her name?"
"Quistis," Selphie said, without missing a beat.
"Quistis," Imalia repeated wistfully. "I like it." A hand went up to point deeper into the library. The space along its path seemed to harden and solidify, and where a moment before the area between them and the inner walls had been a twisting chaos, under that line Irvine saw form emerge and turn into a path, and a door. "There. Now leave me be. I promise you I'll have words with my grandson when this is over."
No you won't. "Thank you." He grabbed Selphie's hand before and before she could complain the two of them were walking away from the lone woman in the chair, and towards the inner doors. Irvine shuddered as the grabbed the handle
NO NO NO
NO FURTHER
GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT
and twisted it, the metal squirming like worms under his hand, and he and Selphie were through only half a second before they slammed shut behind them. He felt his coattails tear like a razor had caught them, and they were in the dark again, a strong wind buffeting them from nowhere and only Selphie's light to illuminate in the darkness.
"What was that about?" she asked quietly as they stood there, not taking any step forward. "Why the quick exit?"
"The books she was reading, one of them was a history one."
"I don't…oh." Selphie sighed. "That poor woman."
"Forget her, poor us," Irvine muttered, staring into the darkness. He could make out faint shapes down there, moving silently just beyond the edge of Selphie's flames. He shuddered as something that could have been a head or an arm turned and something that could have been eyes stared at him, and that wind howled above them breathing down his neck. "Selphie, what she said back there…"
"About?" she replied.
"About us. When we get out of here…" He reached for her hand. Found it and gripped it. "Let's make her right."
She smiled up at him and didn't miss a beat. But then, she never had. One of the reasons he loved her. "Sure."
God I just hope I haven't left it too late, the gunman thought, as they walked into the darkness together. He could feel her in there somewhere. At the centre of that storm was a girl not much younger than him, and he could feel the anger and fear radiating around him. They were closer now.
"Well that was intense," Zell said, kicking a rose petal from under his feet.
Xu felt a sudden irritation at the man and wanted to tell him to stop, but she realised he was just feeling nervous. She knew Zell well enough to know he got loud when he got nervous.
"Sorry," he said, looking around the place they had found themselves in. "But where are we?"
They were in the rose garden. Or rather they were in whatever the old palace's rose garden had been. Now it wasn't so much a garden as a meadow. The field of roses went as far as they could see, like Rinoa's flower-field but nowhere near as benign. Thorns grabbed at her heels wherever they stepped and she could feel a dozen scratches every time she put her foot down. The sky was that same rainbow chaos, but somehow dead and grey like a giant cataract covered the air above them. She didn't care though, because she was looking farther ahead than Zell and had already seen the tower. taller than anything she'd ever seen and covered in spikes and thorns and half a dozen things she couldn't even identify but knew to touch would maim and kill. She had eyes only for that tower, and the sound of spray she heard from behind it. She could feel a pull inside her and somehow she knew Quistis was up in that thing, could feel it in her bones and mind as the memories given to her by Shiva reached out towards their home. She could hear a dull roar as behind the towering stone edifice the sea surged up what had to be a cliff and sent huge waves crashing against it. How there could be a huge field of roses and an ocean halfway up a palace, half a mile above the ground if it was a meter, wasn't a question she even bothered to think of. Only the tower held her interest. I have to be there.
"Xu?"
She knocked his hand away irritably as she stared up and tried to figure out a way to climb the monster. "Not now Zell, we-"
"No really Xu."
Intruders.
Away.
She turned at the command in Zell's voice and saw it. She felt like laughing as the shadows rose up from the thorns, teeth bared and blades raised, sightless eyes staring out of black faces. Is this supposed to scare me, little girl? She and Zell stood close together, the martial artist's fists raised as the copies of Leonard Nerva inched forward. There had to be a dozen, two dozen, and even as she watched more oozed up from between the thorns of the rose-bushes, forming into the mocking and grinning man she remembered. "Zell, do you trust me?" she whispered.
Zell didn't take his eyes away from the others. "Of course."
No entry.
Retreat.
"I need to be in that tower," she said.
Zell grinned, turning back around to face the horde of clones and going down into a fighting stance. For a second all of the wear and tiredness and years fell away, and he was a teenager again out on his first SeeD mission. "I can arrange that." He cocked a thumb back at her. "I'll hold the fort out here, go for it."
Die.
Die.
Xu spun and ran, as fast as she could. She heard the clank of metal meeting metal as the first clone jumped forward, meeting Zell's armoured fists. There was a whoop of joy from Zell as more rushed forward, and Xu was already halfway across the field, spilling flowers in her wake. Her hands grasped the iron handles of the door and she hissed as heat ran through her palms. She heard footsteps from behind her and looked around fast enough to see a shadow rearing up, cold dead eyes and a grim smile across its blank face. She kicked out using the door for leverage and was rewarded as her steel-capped boot went through the thing's face like she was kicking through pottery. The thing clawed at its face as it fell back and Xu was wrenching the door open with all the strength she had, Zell still fighting what could have metres or miles away, the air seeming to distort the distance between them. With one thought for the man – win, Dincht - she pulled as hard as she could, and the last thing she saw of the outside was a thin line of rainbow light, and the rose petals sweeping around the man. Then the doors swung shut, and the only light in the tower's interior came from above, along with the sound of surf.
She climbed.
"Was it everything you thought it would be?" Morden asked.
Seifer stared at the man down the barrel of his gunblade, aching to pull the trigger. But he could feel Old Rin holding him back somehow. Those faint blue eyes stared at him with scorn and he wanted to wipe the smirk from the man's face. It was the smirk of a man who knew he'd won, the gaze of a man who thought you were just one more amusement. Harmless. He'd seen that stare before and he hated it, he fucking hated it.
He'd expected to be surrounded by luxury and debauchery, gold and tacky furnishings everywhere. Instead the castle he found himself in reminded him of the old orphanage, dressed stone and walls covered with tapestries and curtains, wrought-iron chandeliers above casting down flickering candlelight onto the floors. The entire thing was like a child's image of what a castle should look like. "I liked the old place the way it was," Seifer said.
Morden shook his head. He was wearing a simple white cloth suit and there were no weapons in his hands but somehow Seifer didn't trust that faint azure gaze. "I had some hopes for you Almasy, before Loire got his claws into you. You fought for us once, with Adel against SeeD. You could have been a hero instead of a lackey."
"No, I'd have just been a different lackey," Seifer said. His eyes were watering, he could feel something digging at his brain as Morden stared him down. He felt a hand on his shoulder and instantly he felt better as the older Sorceress beside him stepped forward.
"Your dream will be over soon," Old Rin said. "Surrender now and this need not be painful."
Seifer watched as the smug satisfaction on Morden's face faded away, replaced by anger. "You think you can stop us? You can't stop us. We won, false angel."
"The only false angel in this cursed place is your own, Aimsland," Rin said. Wings unfolded behind her, her power draping the room. They looked like Rinoa's, a pure white, but smaller and more intense. As if their wildness had been tamed long ago, the extraneous and useless parts stripped away until only the perfect core remained. A true master of Sorcery. "Look around, the storm around this place." They had heard it when they had crossed over the threshold, searching through the castle for a way into the centre of that power. Eventually Rinoa had just forced her way through, throwing surprise away as they blasted their way through magical defences towards the centre of the palace and the goddess there. They knew they had been noticed because the last door they had entered had been into this ballroom, with the man himself waiting for them. "It will crumble soon enough. She can't control it. Better to end it now and face justice than die when it falls."
The anger turned to fury, and the power Aimsland had always wanted and now had bubbled up into those eyes that shined with an inhuman blue light. "NEVER!"
The anger made him sloppy, or rushed, because Seifer saw the blow coming before he was even halfway across the room. Blue lances swept up and down where he had been standing, scorching deep grooves into the stone floor. Ribbons of white met it and Seifer had to look away as Rin and Morden's power collided with a scream of twisting space and rock. He caught a glance of a glance and moved again as Blue magic passed by hot enough to burn even without touching. Instead of fear or caution though Seifer exulted. Finally, a real fight. He felt like laughing. He'd faced Blue magic across the battlefield before. Quistis had a lifetime of patience and experience with her power, had studied it and shaped it into a hundred different forms. Morden was throwing it out without thinking, raw energy with all the simplicity of a bullet or blade. Seifer could handle that. Readying his gunblade, he aimed for the centre of that sapphire-white storm and struck.
She hadn't changed, not from the last time Xu had seen her. But the eyes were different here. Last time she had been pushed away and the look in Quistis' eyes had been resignation, acceptance. Now there was confusion and discord and she felt her spirits lift just a little bit, as outside the waves from the imaginary ocean crashed up and left water running down the windows. Zell had to be fighting in a storm out there.
"You again?" Imalia said, and the voice was tired. "Why do you keep coming? What do you want from me?" She sat cross-legged in the centre of the room, surrounded by books that had been tossed there from empty shelves that lined the room. Some had pages that fluttered in the breeze, others were empty leather covers with only scraps where the contents had been torn out. White paper drifted gently across the room and Xu picked one out of the air. Ragged scribbles covered the page, dense-packed and so close as to be an unreadable mess.
- -
She let go and it fluttered away into the air, joining a host of others as they circled the blonde woman. Quistis/Imalia sat at the centre of a storm of words. Memories.
"I'm here for you," Xu said quietly. "Always for you."
"I don't know what was in these books. Back out there it was all so simple, but now…" Imalia/Quistis shook her head and the pain on her face was obvious. "I had dreams, I think. My brother said he'd make them all come true but I don't remember dreaming like this." She frowned. "My brother? I don't have a…" she held her head in her hands. "I can't think. Can't think."
Xu stepped forward, a hand outstretched. If she could just touch. "Just let me help you," she begged. "I can-" She stopped as the blade whipped up almost faster than her eyes could see. The same chaos that twisted the fairy-tale roses and tower into this dark place was in the sword too. Xu looked down its length, saw the whorls and golden links of the Save the Queen twisted around the blade, followed the steel until she was looking into her eyes.
"Don't, just don't. I…" she stopped.
"Quistis-"
"My name is Imalia! IMALIA!"
She stepped forward, ignored the pain of the whip's barbs as they tore at her clothes and skin, stepping past it until she was almost close enough to touch the other woman. She felt cold steel encircle her and ignored the pain as she tried to look past the angry thing in front of her and talk at the person inside. "There was someone called Imalia Aimsland but not the one that Morden wanted," Xu said quietly. "She grew up into an amazing woman, with hopes and dreams, people she trusted and a family of her own. Your brother didn't want that person, he wanted a copy of himself, someone as bitter and twisted as he was. So he tried to kill her and make that person with what was left and his own memories."
"If I don't have those I have nothing," Imalia said, her voice like sandpaper as she held onto the sword that wrapped around Xu like barbed wire. The books still whirled around as the storm tried to break through into the tower, paper flying around like daggers.
Xu felt a cut across her cheek and went on, the angry rustling of pages all around them nearly drowning out her voice. "You know this is what Morden wanted. Is it what you wanted? Quistis wanted a world where justice ruled, where people didn't have to be afraid of things like this. She wanted peace. Is this what you wanted?"
"I don't know what I want." Imalia whispered, and Xu heard the despair there. "Why are you here? Why can't you just leave me alone?"
"Because we made a promise."
"What? WHAT?"
If I was lost, would you come and find me?
I'd bring you back from the end of the world, however far you went.
I promise.
The wind roared around them, a gale of screams and water as the ocean crashed in through the cracked tower walls, the light of the fire throwing up strange twisted shadows. Xu saw grey wings splashed against the wall and the pages weaving and forming, glimpses of crazed eyes through the gaps in the maelstrom. She felt something cold and clawed grasp her around the neck and try to wrench her backwards. Please god just give me a little more time. "I'm here now," she said. "Please."
Blue eyes looked into Xu's own and the raven-haired SeeD commander saw something inside them chip and break, some barrier come down or vanish. The woman in front of her spoke. Not the cold and hard voice Xu had heard across the television screen in front of a burning timber, something older she had heard a thousand times. "Help me," Quistis whispered.
She stepped forward through the storm of wind and paper, saw the words crawl across the torn pages like a row of ants (), felt the barbs of the whip fall away as Quistis dropped her arms away and Xu embraced her lover for the first time in months, the first time since back in Garden all those months ago. She whispered quietly
I love you
and felt it like a fire burning through her mind, felt the memories and thoughts and soul that Shiva had kept safe flow out of her like a torrent, through her hands. She was looking into Quistis' eyes as they widened and something happened there, because suddenly the other woman was limp in her arms and Xu had to move in close before she could fall, all the time surrounded by the storm of black words and dancing shadows, a wind that screamed at her like a banshee. Something was crawling there, red and white shadows crawling around under her skin like worms. She felt something run over her hands and for a second was frozen in fear as she thought she felt blood. But then she saw it, and almost retched as something viscous and black fell away onto the floor, dissipating and vanishing even as she watched. She thought she saw things in those pools of liquid before they vanished, images and faces, and Xu realised they were memories, fakes forced out as the proper ones took their place again. Thank you, Shiva. She felt a burning down her hand, angry pinpricks where it touched and ran over her skin on the way to the ground and nonexistence. Morden's memories vanishing into smoke. She ignored it, didn't let her mind register it as Quistis' eyes opened, and there it was. Xu felt like laughing, felt like standing up inside that whirling hurricane and laughing into the rafters. Instead she brushed an idle hair out of her love's face.
"Xu?" The voice was weak but it was hers, all hers.
"I'm here, I'm here. I'm not going away."
She looked around. "We're inside the tower? I can remember…roses. God it's all so confused."
"A nightmare," Xu whispered, and meant it. "It was just a nightmare."
She sat up, sloughing off the paper that had surrounded them as they lay there. The storm around them held its breath, the waves outside miles away as Quistis blinked her blue eyes clear and looked up at Xu. "He was so…angry. At everything." She looked haunted. Like she wanted to be sick or furious or sad, at herself or Morden. "My god, I did all those things..." She put a hand to her mouth, looked ill.
"No, not now," Xu said forcefully. She wanted to sit there forever, just kneel on the ground with Quistis rested on her lap, but she knew they couldn't. Zell. "We have to leave. They're waiting for us." They might be looking for us, even now, she didn't say. She didn't know how the connection between a Sorceress and her Knight worked, but she could feel it in her bones: Almas knew, and she would be here soon enough, dragging her endless chaos with her. "We have to go now."
They stood cautiously, testing the waters as the storm finally died down. Xu caught a lonely page wafting down from the rafters of the stone tower and saw the word sprinted on it in a scrawled child's hand; NO. She ignored it as they went down the winding stairs, Quistis seeming to gain strength with every step she took away from that closed room. Finally the huge black doors hung before them, twisted and broken, some swaying dangerously from its hinge. Xu shook her head in amusement as she saw Zell splayed out across it, resting like some conquering hero. Of the hordes of black swordsmen that had converged on them as she had run there was no sign, only pools of black oil dotting the outside like water after the rain. "Dincht?"
Zell just smiled. "Told you I could…" His face went from a grin to surprise and all the way to horror before Xu realied how stupid she'd been and what Zell was seeing.
She waved her arms at him to ward him off. "No, No! Zell, you don't have to-"
But Zell was already coming out of his fighting stance as Quistis just waved a hand and smiled at him. "Hello Zell." She looked around the endless field of roses, brown and curled up and dying. "You've been busy."
His mouth dropped open and before Xu could stop him he'd rushed past her, picking up Quistis in a bear hug and spinning around. "Quisty!"
Quistis laughed as he put her down and she got her bearings on the ground, pulling the black jacket over her in the cold. She frowned as she saw what she was wearing. "It's good to see you too. Everyone's here?"
Zell nodded. "And then some. Hyne, god, it's good to see you again." He looked at Xu and his face said it all. I owe you, forever. Xu had her lover back, Zell had his older sister. "Now what?"
Now we go, far away from here, as fast as we can. But she pushed that thought out of her head. "We find the others. We go further in." She looked around the field, once filled with red blooms and now just blackened stems and thorns. "Somehow. Quistis?"
"I can take us in," Quistis said, looking out over the field as if seeing it for the first time. "I didn't forget anything that…anything that I did. Morden's life is gone but everything that I did after he turned me into Imalia is still a part of me."
"You didn't-" Xu started to protest, but Quistis overruled her.
"No, I did. Some version of me, and those are my memories." She pointed into the distance, into what to Xu was more blank air. "This way, there'll be a doorway, or at least something like that. I used it when I got…when it got bad. When she needed comfort." She shuddered, and Xu wondered what form that comfort had taken.
She's just a little girl, really.
"Well, let's get moving," Zell said with a grin, all the uncertainty of the last weeks seeming to have washed off him now that he had his family back. "We don't want to be last to the finale."
She grasped Quistis hand. It felt warm. Felt right. "Let's put an end to this." There would be time afterwards, time when they could just look into each other's eyes and talk. For now though they were SeeD, and they had a mission.
They walked on.
One there was a little egg. It hatched and a monster came out and ate the world.
A place for everything and everything in its place.
The end.
His footsteps echoed on nothing and he had to try hard not to look down. There was nothing under his feet, nothing anywhere. Just darkness as far as his eyes could see. All he could feel was Rinoa's hand in his own, a soft white light enveloping from both as his skin crawled like ants were marching across it.
They were nowhere. Just an endless black expanse and Squall felt afraid. He'd been here before, lost in nothing. Darkness all around and nothing in the world except a dull grey point ahead of them, faint and ethereal but there none the less. Squall looked up and his eyes played tricks on him as at the same time he saw nothing but darkness, but something inside that nothing. Like a wind that was invisible but still tugged at him, sucking him inward. He shivered.
"You're not alone," Rinoa whispered, and he could feel the warmth of her breath in his ear. It gave him strength. His drew his gun-blade in his free hand, but felt Rinoa tugging him back as he stepped towards that grey shape ahead. "No."
"Rin."
"Let me," his wife, his Sorceress said, and he heard the please without it being said. He nodded, and Rinoa stepped forward, away from him. That light still surrounded him though.
"Almas?"
Go away. the voice arrived in his memory without travelling anywhere else. He knew he'd heard the words spoken sometime in the past, and was just recalling them now. It repelled him.
"It's time to go home, Almas," Rinoa said softly.
This is my home, Squall remembered being said.
"You know that isn't true, not really." Rinoa stepped closer and the shape could be made out now. A small girl, barely older than five. The wings sprouting from her back were hardly larger than Squall's handprints. Rinoa knelt by the spectre. "What do you want Almas?"
I want to live. I want a life. Tiny hands reached out to Rinoa, palms up as if to say; look at me. I saw them in your heads all your heads where was my childhood my orphanage my family my friends.
Childhood kept in a lab like a specimen, turned into a vessel for the power of a God. Adolescence spent becoming a trained killer by a man with no morals or humanity in him. A short time as the symbol of rebirth for a crazed and bitter man, and finally this. Squall stepped forward and knelt down as the Almas/Sorceress/thing looked up at him, grey eyes in a featureless face. "I can't change the past Almas. But this isn't any better." He gestured around at emptiness, his words echoing in the endless space. From outside the room had been a sphere, with a stained-glass door twice as high as himself. From inside it looked endless. "Are you happy here, Almas?"
I was loved. Morden Kettil Imalia my mother my f- The voice stopped in his mind unfinished.
"They're not real, you know that. Just like we did," Rinoa said. "Morden wanted you to bring his family back, not to give you one of your own. Kettil was…he was just a man tied to Morden's dream. Quis- Imalia might have loved you for who you were, but not this." She reached down gently and placed a hand under the godchild's chin, bringing it up until they were eye to eye. Squall could see the vibrations run through Rinoa's body, almost feel the needles pricking at his skin even though he wasn't touching either of them. She's so strong, he thought, of both of them.
What do I want I don't know I want a family I want a real family I want to be loved I I I
"Then end this," Rinoa said. "You'll never find a real family in this place. You put it up, tear it back down before it's too late." A second Aftermath, worse the longer Time Compression went on. Squall couldn't imagine how bad it would get. "Please."
I I I no I can't Imalia where are you I need you I The child's head whipped around and Rinoa's gaze followed it, as a beam of fading light split about the darkness. She felt a burst of joy run through her body as a blonde-haired figure walked into the room, the light sealing itself back again and the endless darkness taking hold once more. Her breath caught in her throat as the other man walked up to Almas and knelt down.
"Hey," Imalia Aimsland said gently. But there was something there, something else there, and Rinoa couldn't…
Imalia Imalia help help me I need you I don't know where to go it's dark and I don't know the way out I don't know who to listen to.
"She's right," Imalia said gently, brushing a stray lock of hair from the face of the tiny child. "We've been lied to, all of us," she went on. "There's nothing in here for us, Almas."
Oh my Hyne no how can it- Can it be? Rinoa's heart stopped as she thought it through, and Almas came to the same conclusion almost as fast.
You're not Imalia.
"No, I'm not," Quistis said. "She was never real, Almas. Just one more lie. I- AH!" Quistis snapped her hand away as bright red bloomed across it like she had been scored by a knife.
No no no nothing here nothing here now where are you Morden where I'll tear it down. No family here or there or anywhere. I'll tear it down.
On top of us all.
He was flagging. Low on energy, low on hate, low on whatever power he'd leeched from Trepe or been given by his sorceress in a bottle. Seifer had fought a hundred duels in his lifetime, in battles worse than this and he could read Morden like a book. Just fall down you bastard, just one opening is all I'll need.
The room around them screamed like it was alive. Tendrils of energy blue and white lashed through it scoring into the walls and floors where Sorcery met Blue magic and they tried to devour each other. Seifer's coat smoked from a dozen or more holes where droplets of nothing had sprayed onto him and a cut down his side that burned like fire where he had been a little too reckless. He threw his caution to the wind long ago when the fight turned from a controlled dance of magic and blades into something wilder as Morden became angrier and angrier and Old Rin began to throw more and more of herself at him. The light flashed through the room with every impact and Seifer's limbs worked on automatic, parrying and deflecting what he could and dodging the rest.
"DIE ALREADY!"
Morden brought his hands above him and screaming light poured from them, slamming it down where Seifer had been milliseconds ago, the floor rending apart, masonry and blood (blood?) flying everywhere, the castle seeming to moan in pain as Morden Aimsland lost control. He was barely visible, a pale figure wrapped inside a shield of faded blue light that flickered and broke and re-formed with every strike Old Rin made.
"I WON'T GO BACK! I WON'T!" Whether he was screaming it or crying it Seifer didn't know and didn't give a shit, as a chunk of stone flew out of the debris field the room had turned into and scored a bloody path across his chest. Goddamnit you crazy old man.
Old Rin's voice carried through the chaos like the voice of God himself. "It is over."
"NO!" Morden's gaze shifted as something moved out of the shadows to his side, and for a second the tiredness in his face was replaced by rage as Laguna and Irvine stepped from the room's last shadows, rifles ready and aimed.
Seifer could feel another presence behind him and knew who it was. "Took your…goddamn…time."
"We were busy," Kiros replied curtly. Ward just nodded.
"Heya Sefy," Selphie said cheerfully. He wanted to tell her to shut up but one look at that tired-but-still-cheerful face and he just didn't have it in him.
It was a rout. Against Seifer and Old Rin he had held his ground, but seven against one, even seven against a magically-powered dynamo was no real fight. Eventually Seifer and Laguna stood side-by-side as Morden snarled at them from the back of the room, clothes torn and bleeding from half a dozen wounds from rifle, Sorcery and blade.
"Goddamnit! I'd won! I'D WON!" Morden paused and sucked air down in ragged breaths, the blue light pulsing with every gasp. But it dimmed, slowly and steadily. It had been a raging azure fire when they had begun. Now it was a mist. Whatever power source he was using was running dry.
"She has nothing left to give you. Look." Rin gestured up into the catacombs, and Seifer could see from the corner of his eye as the colour slowly drained from the room, running away like water downhill. It flowed out of the room towards the core of the palace, leaving behind nothing but gray stone and wood that crumbled like ash as they watched.
Morden's eyes widened as he saw and Seifer could see the despair in them. He kept his distance though, that light still pulsing around the crazed cultist leader. "…Why?"
"She has her own problems." Rin said, almost gently. Some sympathy for a fellow Sorceress maybe? Certainly not for the man in front of her. "Resign yourself."
Morden spat blood onto the ground as the Blue light sputtered and died like a light-bulb finally giving out, leaving behind nothing but a broken and half-beaten man with a broken blade in his hands. He looked up as the castle seemed to shift under them, a tearing sound like ripping paper in their ears as a massive crack ran through the centre of the banquet hall.
"You're done," Seifer said with relish, pointing his gunblade at the man's throat.
Morden didn't cry or scream or fall to his knees. Instead he laughed, and in spite of the man's half dead appearance something in that laugh made Seifer step back. "Maybe…" he chuckled. "But if she needs me, I'm here." He looked up and that blue light was still there. But even as Seifer watched, it was fading away, leaving behind nothing but grey irises. "Blue mages have always answered their family's call."
Seifer frowned. "The hell are you…" he stopped as Laguna gasped like ice water had just been poured over him. "What? WHAT?"
"We have to go," the old soldier said. Seifer knew that tone of voice. He'd heard it from his commanders often enough, from Trepe and the other instructors. A voice that knew it would be obeyed.
"After we just…the hell Loire-"
"He's right," Old Rin said, staring past them all, at something only she could see. Her eyes weren't Rinoa's deep brown, but something else entirely that shifted between all the colours of the rainbow.
"What about Leon- what about Rinoa?" Seifer asked, eyes still on the man knelt in front of them. But even as he watched something…ethereal in Morden left. The man fell to the ground, strings cut, a beatific smile on his face that reminded Seifer of a shark. "What about this asshole!" He had to shout to be heard over the rumblings coming from the castle's core, spreading out like shockwaves.
"No need to worry about that," Old Rin said. "They have their own shadow to face."
It stunk. He didn't like it, not a single goddamn it. He grit his teeth and spat. "FINE!" He spun away from the unconscious Morden, that grin still on his face, and together they ran, as fast as they could, as far from the encroaching grey ash as they could.
Squall saw it even as Quistis tried desperately to talk sense into the small ghost. Something in the air, almost impossible to see in the darkness, but he saw it. An outline of a person in fainted blue wreathes, coalescing out of nothing almost on top of Almas. A ghostly hand reached out to touch her shoulder, and the thought ran through Squall's mind-
Morden
-as Almas' eyes lit up, the hand-sized wings on her back suddenly pulsing with energy as the light was sucked down into the girl's body.
Tear it all down.
"Almas please! It doesn't have to be this way!" Quistis begged, but her words didn't seem to reach her.
No place for me, no place for any of us.
"Almas we can help, that's what we do. That's what SeeDs do," Rinoa said calmly as around them the darkness moaned like wooden beams on the edge of breaking apart. "It doesn't have to end here, let us help you." She grabbed the little girl and shook her, her white wings almost vibrating. "You're like me you're not alone LET ME HELP YOU!" she shouted.
Like me?
Rinoa smiled. "Yes."
Only one Sorceress. Only one at a time ever. The youngest child knows this.
"Oh God I taught her that," Quistis said in horror.
And there will be only one again, the little grey girl said/thought/recorded.
"NO!" Rinoa screamed in despair over the roar of entropy.
"We have to go," Squall said, and wondered even as he said it if they could. Whether they'd be trapped in here. The darkness bulged and dripped around them like melting tar or plastic and he could taste static as he breathed, Sorcery coating the air itself. The beam of light that could be the exit or could be a door to nowhere wavered and twisted ahead of him, and without another thought he met Quistis' (is it true can it be true please Hyne let it be true) gaze, and together they picked Rinoa up and dragged her away from the small girl. A word screamed through Squall's head so loud he thought it might burst
MOTHER
and then they were away, running for the light and bursting through it back into a castle turned grey and empty. He spun around. "Quisty?"
"Not now Squall," Quistis replied, and that tone of voice made him smile in spite of the screaming collapsing palace around him. He could see Xu coming towards them, and the relief on her face must have matched the shock on his own because she smiled at him and just nodded. It's real.
"It's just…it's good to have you back," he said weakly. He'd speak more, if they got out. Already the ground underneath them was bubbling, their shoes sinking into what should have been concrete.
"Not like this," Rinoa whispered feebly, and before Squall could react turned back and reached for the door handle leading back into that nothing. They didn't budge an inch.
"What's happening?" Squall asked as he lifted a hand up, ash drifting down onto his palm.
"It's coming apart, all of it. She doesn't want it anymore," Rinoa said, still staring at those doors as they buckled and warped under some unimaginable strain.
Squall grabbed his wife's hand, Quistis' in the other. They had done this once before, too. He remembered the long dark, wandering in a cracked empty plain with no end, pictures of his world shoved into his eyeballs, nightmarish scenes of his life gone wrong. If he had to go through it again this time he wouldn't have to do it alone, at least.
"I could have done it," Rinoa said with regret. "She's just a kid."
"I know you could have Rin," Quistis said. "But she didn't want to go."
Squall shook his as around them the walls twisted and collapsed and expanded all at once.
"I just-"
