Vincent found the ship where they left it and joined Barret, Cid, and Yuffie inside.
"This world doesn't have much in the way of artifacts," Yuffie said before taking her seat at the helm. "It's pretty much useless."
Barret huffed and settled with Vincent in the passenger line. "Or maybe we just didn't know where to look."
"Don't much matter, do it?" Cid joined Yuffie and started up the machine. "Sounds like we've got a new goal on that place with all the idiots."
"That doesn't narrow it down," Yuffie said.
"Fine. That place they said had a lot of crystal nonsense."
"Still doesn't narrow it down."
Vincent steadied himself against the backrest as the ship took off. Barret, once unsettled by this contraption's motion, fell right to sleep as they prepared for takeoff. Cid and Yuffie fell into talk about their itinerary. It was a long and rocky trip ahead of them.
But he was used to that by now.
"Lightning's joined the others."
Yeul sat with Trey and Queen near a ledge overlooking the Crystal Tower of Gaia III. "Why?" Yeul asked. "It seems sudden to return to Valhalla."
"Cinque," Queen said, "hold on. Meet me on Gaia III before you continue."
"Why Valhalla?" Trey whispered.
"That's what I'm trying to find out," Queen said.
Trey clasped his hands under his chin in thought. "The Cie have acted in odd ways almost since we first gathered them. And now to run back without a word."
"They have reason sufficient to act oddly," Queen said.
"Reason, yes, but I don't see the motivation. And what would hallucinations and uttering nonsense have to do with this?"
She waited in Etro's old throne. It didn't feel much like a throne with the way it dug into her wrists, but maybe Etro didn't care.
When Bhunivelze infiltrated her children's new home, she almost didn't notice. The disturbance in the air felt so minor after everything else she felt from here. The bleeding edges of Planet R, the shrieking pain of Gaias VII and X… Bhunivelze left a trail of reckless destruction no matter where he went. And she felt it, now. She felt the breaking of the Cie and the absorption of Valhalla's stretching currents.
He came to the throne room first and she shuddered to think how he presented himself. That elongated neck, tri-colored eyes, claw-like hands, and metal-embedded skin would scare away most hardened sky walkers.
"You intrude on my realm," Bhunivelze said. "I'll have you removed."
"All in good time."
Bhunivelze stared at her with unnerving eyes. "You speak to your superior."
"You forget that for your Cie to fully ascend—and by extension for you to regain all of your sweet mother's power—you need my shards."
Bhunivelze moved toward her, eyes unblinking and limbs unnatural in their motions. She grew too used to human mannerisms. Yet he still imitated mortal form and that told her more than he could say. "I'll take them from you," Bhunivelze said.
"You forget that I'm no mortal with from which you may take what you like."
"Yet you're no god."
"Not to you, perhaps." She leaned forward and showed him confidence. "Yet some still worshipped me as such. And for good reason."
Bhunivelze paused and betrayed his hesitation. "Are you speaking as if to stall my plans?"
"Time means nothing here. Instead I have a point to make. And that's that you forgot something."
"I forget nothing."
"Oh? Then maybe I imagined all those spare and lonely shards you left. How sloppy of you to kill and not clean up after yourself! Even with those little travelers licking up the living leftovers, I found a veritable feast from the dead. Honestly, I can't imagine how your mother raised you."
Flash of anger in the twitch of his face and Arecia chuckled at how thoroughly he immersed himself in mortal habits.
"Never mind," she said. "It's about time I stopped wasting yours."
Bhunivelze shrieked and reached for her, but it was too late. She dropped into the abyss below the throne and gave up life.
As her consciousness tore and feeling ebbed, she used the last of her control to scatter for the rulers left alone.
The vagabond made high. The child turned old. The musician trained by experience. The torn and prodigal queen. The brother dictated by age. The regretful murderer. The runaway father. The runaway regent. The black mage reluctant.
A would-be Cardinal rejected her, and power moved on.
Widow in the palace, fallen Glaive, then Moon-kissed twins, and finally…
… She retained enough willpower to skip over the arrogant sage and take instead to his once-ill friend.
"A fal'Cie just died." Yeul felt it as a piercing in her chest. "I didn't realize there were any left."
"Which?" Queen asked.
"She left Valhalla."
"… Mother."
"Valhalla?" Trey asked. "What was Mother doing in Valhalla?"
Trey and Queen talked. Yeul wondered why she didn't feel the transition from fal'Cie to Cie gods. Perhaps it didn't work like she remembered.
"Get them back! Now!" Trey grabbed Queen.
Yeul went cold at the tug of something primal. "I can't reach mine," she said. "I can't hear Noel or Serah—"
"Listen to me," came Vanille's voice as a distant whisper. "Don't come. Run. Run as far and as fast as—"
Yeul lost her again, but her words left a lingering shiver in her spine and a warning in her ears.
Queen looked at her and Yeul knew she heard the same. Trey pressed a hand to his mouth hard enough to turn the skin white. Queen hissed an order to her siblings and Yeul took her hand in time for them to warp out.
But the Historia Crux rumbled and shuddered. The space about them turned checkered. The Reds argued about getting away from Bhunivelze before they settled on somewhere they hadn't been since this all started.
They barely made it out of the Crux again before Light overwhelmed and they collapsed all together in the shade of a towering school.
Yeul barely felt her fingers as she followed them, thoughts racing.
They lost Valhalla and the rest of the Cie to Bhunivelze.
