Queen of Souls
By Soul Hunter
Chapter Ten
One of the first things a pilot keeps an eye on in an emergency situation is the aircraft's altimeter, a device the measures the distance between the aircraft and the ground below it. Normally, small dips in the altimeter's reading causes little alarm, as the vessel's cruising height can be easily influenced by such factors as wind resistance, turbulence and air pockets. A few feet on either direction do not usually warrant much attention, as long as the changes are not too abrupt.
The reading on the Ragnarok's altimeter was moving so fast that it could shame a slot machine. Quistis stared in horror as the gauge measurement dropped for a couple of hundred feet in less than five seconds. They were diving, and they were diving real fast. The tortured groans of metal being subjected under immense stress assaulted her ears as the immobilized elevator flaps fought from being torn apart by the immense pressure of the winds rushing toward them at a relative velocity of nearly two thousand miles per hour. It mixed horrendously with the shrill cries of a turbulence-battered fuselage, filling the cockpit with deafening whines as the Ragnarok plunged in bullet-like fashion toward the ground that was speedily rushing up to meet it.
The embattled instructor struggled to regain control of the disabled ailerons, but to no avail. At this speed, it would be a miracle for them to make it out of the resulting crash alive. Fighting desperately against the terror creeping into her, Quistis tried to remember the flight training she received from the Esthar space engineers a few weeks back. Eyes lighting up with a flicker of hope, she swiftly groped underneath the front panel to reach for the emergency retro-rocket switch. Slender fingers felt the unmistakable contours of a T-lever and consequently twisted it hard, causing the retro-rockets mounted on the dragon ship's mechanical claws to explode with violent flames and exhaust gases spewing forth to oppose its powerful thrust. Her body suddenly snapped forward with the Ragnarok's abrupt deceleration.
"AAAAAHHHHHH!!!" A loud shout rang out followed by a crashing sound that startled Quistis. She then gawked at Hunter, the lower half of his body sticking out from underneath the co-pilot's front control panel.
"It would've been nice to have warned me before stepping on the brakes" He groaned while picking himself up. Quistis fought an urge to laugh.
"Sorry, but I had to slow us down somehow." She then stated. "But we're not out of the woods yet. Strap yourself somewhere and prepare for impact. Please follow emergency landing procedures as instructed by your flight crew."
"Ha-ha." Hunter mocked as he fastened his seat belts. His face then went back to its serious cast. "Can you still control this thing?"
"Hardly. The elevators are busted so there's no way to properly land this thing. The only thing that I still have right now is the rudder control." Quistis curtly answered. "Why? You have any ideas?"
"I was able to triangulate the position of our attacker from the direction those fireballs came from. If we're going to crash, we might as well do it on top of its sorry butt."
"Do you think that's it?" She asked. "The incubus?"
"I have no doubts." Hunter answered sullenly. "I felt its presence. And I'm sure it felt me too, that's why it attacked us."
Bad blood a century old, Quistis thought. She couldn't help wondering about the intense animosity between the shady warrior and the malevolent adversary. Her silent musing was interrupted when the external proximity sensor triggered frantic beeping sounds to alert them that there were only three thousand feet separating them from ground zero.
"Okay, here goes nothing!" She bellowed, pouring all her strength in turning the steering stick to the right. At the same time, the resourceful instructor alternated between flicking the left retro-rocket on and off to fine-tune their otherwise unstable descent. Vehemently resisting gravity's pull, the Ragnarok squealed in defiance as opposing forces threatened to tear it apart while it made a dangerous banking maneuver southward.
But the daring tactic worked. After a couple of twisting turns, they finally fixed their eyes on the mighty devourer of souls standing right in front of them.
"Center it!" Hunter hollered. "Make sure you hit it dead on!"
He gazed at them wide-eyed, not exactly expecting the bold maneuver they performed that brought their dragon ship into a direct collision course with him. And even though the soul reaper knew that it would take more than that to kill him, he still wasn't willing to absorb the impact of a half-ton juggernaut screaming towards him at speeds in excess of three hundred miles per hour. Red-hot fireballs fired anew from his hands to pulverize the scarlet space shuttle.
"Ohmigod!" Quistis exclaimed. In a desperate attempt to evade the hellish onslaught, she quickly reached again for the controls of the mechanical claws, turning them in an awkwardly perpendicular position to the aircraft. With one rocket thruster pointing up and the other jutting down, the Ragnarok began to spin like a top, its rapid rotation acting like a proverbial drill bit as it deflected the fireballs aside. The nauseating sensation Quistis and Hunter felt from the spin was so immense they thought they were literally turning inside out. Their tortured screams mixed with the squealing sound made by the aircraft's fast and twisting plummet.
The soul reaper's horrified groan became drowned in a thunderous impact as hundreds of pounds of massive fury struck him mercilessly, his chest area instantaneously caving in when the Ragnarok's nose rammed solidly into it. Viscous fluid of red and black hue discharged from his mouth like a geyser, decorating the transparent windshields with a repugnant, maroon shadow. Upon impact, inertia kept his legs from being dragged away with the body, and left the pair of limp appendages on its spot while pouring out blood and green pus all over the sandy terrain. The flailing left claw of the Ragnarok, now almost severed from its polymer joint, flung out to tear his right arm off. It flew off simultaneously with the mechanical limb that had decided to abandon its mounting.
And a tremendous explosion of sand and rocks staggered the surrounding area when the Ragnarok finally touched down hard on the desert ground. It nosed down and dug right into the layer of loose sediments, with the beleaguered soul devourer still snagged on its battered front cone. Dragged by its own momentum, the dragon vessel ploughed across nearly a mile of hot earth, toppling down rows of sturdy cacti and destroying scores of Abyss Worm mounds along its ill-fated path. It seemed to have taken forever, but finally, the out-of-control ship stopped after running through a cluster of rocks that broke its momentum. The ear-splitting chaos was then followed by unsteady silence.
A few moments elapsed, seconds that stretched to minutes, witnessing nothing but silence. Inside the Ragnarok's disheveled cockpit, the two warriors lay unconscious beside each other after the impact tore them off from the safety of their seatbelts. Another couple of minutes transpired before the dark intruder began to stir.
"Uuuhhh" He groaned, pain enveloping his entire body. Fighting off the ordeal, Hunter lifted his head, blinking his eyes rapidly as they struggled to accustom back to the stillness. Slowly, he turned to see Quistis' unconscious form lying next to him.
"Quisty you all right?" He called out while checking her pulse. It didn't take long before the instructor also began to regain consciousness.
"You okay?"
"Barely" She confirmed despite her throbbing head. "What happened?"
"I think we got him" He labored a reply. "Here, let me help you."
Though still wobbly, Hunter managed to lift himself up from the warm floor of the cockpit, after which he flexed his aching muscles to pull Quistis up as well. Expending a few more seconds to shake off a spell of dizziness, the pair simultaneously looked out from the fissured windshield and noted the dark blood splattered all over it.
"We got him, all right." The instructor concurred. "Do you think being torn into pieces is enough to kill it?"
"No, but at least we've got the edge in mobility. Come on, let's dump some earth on him and get this over with."
Hot winds nearly scalded their skins as the pair made an exit from the cockpit, easily sliding down the dragon ship's nose that was still embedded in the sandy ground. Quistis sighed as she looked back to the Ragnarok.
"It's going to take weeks before they can restore her back to full working order again."
"Yeah, but we can worry about that later. Come on." Hunter echoed while taking her hand into his. "We gotta find the incubus lord first."
It turned out they didn't have to go too far. Barely a few yards away from the crash site, Hunter and Quistis stopped dead on their tracks upon beholding the bloodied and decapitated form of the soul reaper. His remaining arm was still groping about in an effort to pull his body to safety, prompting Hunter to gently push the instructor aside.
"Careful, he's still alive."
"Then let's finish the job, Hunter." She looked back at him intently. "Together."
"How very touching!" A hollow voice rang out, startling the pair. They then looked in awe at the twitching soul devourer who was flashing an evil smile at them through his sand-caked face. "Doing everything together an ages-old romantic drivel. You two make me sick!"
The cracking sound of a whip simultaneously resonated with the chime of sliding blades as the two warriors braced themselves for combat. Quistis and Hunter cautiously stepped away from each other to flank the incubus on both sides. Nothing was heard but the subtle whistling of the warm desert winds surrounding the strained stillness as the warrior pair waited for the enemy to make his move, wary of being overcome by excessive eagerness to blindly stage an ill-advised attack. Though he was disabled by the lack of three limbs, they both knew better than to underestimate his outward appearance of vulnerability. The reverberating echoes of internal voices affirmed the SeeD's precaution.
"BE CAREFUL. HE'S MOST DANGEROUS WHEN HE'S DESPERATE. GAMELON AND UMAGA FELL BECAUSE THEY MISTAKENLY THOUGHT HE WAS ALREADY HELPLESS."
"My brother speaks true, mighty one. Stay on your guard, but do not charge with abandon."
Quistis nodded curtly in acknowledging the Brothers' words of caution. There was no doubt in her mind anymore about the legends Hunter spoke of. Sacred and Minotaur knew the enemy, and the apprehension in their voices was enough to make her bolster her vigilance.
"So we meet again, dolt." The incubus shot out once more as he turned to Hunter. "But it seems you are alone, save for your wench here. So where are your friends?"
The dark warrior's teeth gritted as he remembered the other members of the clan of the Hunters: his friends, the very people who met their gruesome deaths in his hands. The glaring evidence of his ultimate failure behind the cloak of success that the enemy's subjugation falsely presented. An eruption of rage promptly exploded inside his chest, a force that he tried to quell with the awareness of its critical worth for his enemy's cause. He knew that the incubus lord was trying to goad him into a reckless mistake by compromising his inner fortitude. His patience was being tried to force him into reckless abandon. Popping sounds emanated as his hands fiercely tightened their grips around the brazen handles of the Twin Jutte.
"You know very well what happened to them" Hunter answered back, his voice as faint as a raging whisper of red smoke and smoldering wrath. "You kill you made me kill them."
Quistis looked at Hunter. In the limited time she had spent with him, she had never seen him this enraged. And it almost scared her.
"Wasn't that gratifying?" The incubus bellowed. "Tell me, how did it feel like to immerse your hands in the blood of your comrades? What was it like to listen to their dying gasps as you slowly submerged your blades into their rotting flesh?"
"You wouldn't know." Hunter snapped back, feeling his grasp on his patience slipping. "It was always your nature to derive joy from death."
"That's right!" The death-bringer hissed. "I do acquire jubilation from the horrors coursing through the death knell of my sumptuous prey. Every gasp, every sob, every stinking moan and plea for their lives to be spared, I revel in it all. There's nothing more enticing than the final heave of breath of one about to surrender her delectable soul to me. It's whets my appetite whenever a toddler's screams of agony as I suck on its young essence mixed with his mother's wails, begging me to take her life instead. It makes me cringe in delight. And the more I speak about it, the more I hunger."
"You do deserve to die." Quistis finally blurted out.
"What is death, my lovely warrior? What purpose does it serve other than to make an empty husk out of my fare's vessel? And for what? Your kind live your lives with laughter and tears over trivial things that did not carry over unto a next realm. Your existence is useless. And you owe me a debt of gratitude for giving your people worth. Just as wheat is nurtured for the grain it yielded, you and your kind crawl into this world to serve as the feast to array my banquet table. You are mine, and your souls shine forth for my enjoyment."
The two furious warriors both acknowledged the wastefulness of spoken words. There was no more need to talk, only to act in the face of the glaring futility to rationalize the enemy's rapacious mindset. The soul devourer needed to die. He had to be killed. And nothing can be simpler than that.
But the means had never been as simple as the ends. Killing him was one thing, how exactly to do it was another. Hunter was startled when slimy tendrils from the soul reaper's mouth shot out and coiled tightly around his neck. It was purely by instinct that his blades lashed out to cut the squirming tentacles off. He wobbled back, feeling weak from the incubus' attempt to bite into his spirit.
"Quistis! Look out!" The dark warrior exclaimed just as another wet tentacle snapped out toward the instructor.
Dodging the attack, Quistis retaliated with a whip slash that sliced the quivering appendage. But she was stunned when the devourer followed up with a vengeful Cosmic Punch that threw her a couple of feet back.
Completely losing her patience, the infuriated SeeD finally charged headlong toward the enemy.
"Let's see you get out of this!!!" Quistis shouted while unleashing her Aqua Breath attack, blasting off gallons upon gallons of water in a powerful jet that bombarded the soul reaper with impunity. His appalling scream tore through the dry air as the immense water pressure pummeled his decapitated form without mercy, all the more made harrowing by the spraying mud that began to engulf his body. Quistis maintained the assault for a few more seconds until the incubus became entirely covered with wet earth.
Unrelenting, the instructor followed her watery attack with the infernal Fire Breath. The surrounding areas, already battered by the desert heat, all the more turned into a blast furnace as the hellish dragon breath emptied its solar fury on the belligerent destroyer, in the process baking the mud covering him to a solid encasing of hardened earth. Quistis herself was almost overwhelmed by the unbearable heat that eventually forced her to cease her attack. As her Fire Breath died down, she beheld with relief the immobilized form of the soul devourer, completely imprisoned in a coffin of hard clay and heat-fused sand that shimmered like glass.
Utmost silence followed the nerve-wracking battle, with the two warriors exhaustedly falling on the hot sand while frantically catching their breaths. Shaking off her fatigue, Quistis noticed Hunter's body shivering furiously, forcing her to ignore the pain coursing through her own as she rushed to his side.
"Hey, are you all right?"
"Uhh bastard almost got me" He stammered. " Thought I was a goner"
"What?" She shot back with alarm. "How what what should I do? Is there something I can do?"
"Don't worry I just need a little rest." He smiled faintly before passing out.
"Hunter! Dammit, don't you die on me now! Hunter!"
End of Chapter Ten