Chapter 8: The Island

Adrian and Seifer were deeply involved in a game of Triple Triad, their poor sets of cards and skills drawing the game out between them. It was difficult for Quistis to watch. Every time she thought one of them was going to win, he would make the wrong move completely, resulting in yet another draw. And both of them seemed genuinely puzzled as to how to beat the other. It was painful.

"Are you guys trying to suck at this, or what?" she finally asked as another game resulted in a tie.

"Why the hell would we do that?" Seifer asked.

"Yeah. Don't insult us," Adrian agreed. "Not everyone can be the queen of the Balamb Garden Card Club."

"I'm just stating a fact. Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but I know several five year olds who could wipe the floor with both of you."

Seifer hissed. "That's harsh, Quistis." But they continued to play, undaunted by her criticism.

They'd been at sea for several days now and Quistis had already had her fill of the ocean. They'd passed as close to Centra as they were going to already, so there was nothing out the windows but choppy blue waves to the horizon. With no landmarks, it felt like they weren't moving at all, like they were stuck on some maddening treadmill. Her legs ached with the need to get up and move. And boredom was beginning to make her testy.

She watched as Seifer and Adrian hunched over their cards, both blind to the obvious opening that could win the either of them the game. With a sigh, she leaned over and took a card out of Seifer's hand, set it down in the middle of the table, and flipped over three of Adrian's cards with her other hand. "There," she said and sat back.

Seifer grinned. "I win!"

"No you don't! That's not fair!" Adrian complained. "She won that game for you. It doesn't count."

"Sorry," Quistis replied, shaking her head. "I couldn't sit and watch you ignore that move anymore."

Proudly, Seifer claimed a card from Adrian's defeated hand. "Ah yeah…that felt good," he said, throwing his arm over Quistis's shoulders as he leaned back again.

"Why do I feel like you two are conspiring against me?" Adrian asked.

"Because we are," Seifer replied.

Laughing, Adrian collected his cards and stretched so that his back popped. "Great. You two can just keep on plotting then. I'm heading to bed for a while." He'd been up for a while and was yawning as he disappeared behind the curtain.

"You hungry?" Seifer asked.

They shared a can of apricots, fought over the last granola bar before deciding to split that as well, then sat back and stared at each other.

"You look like hell," he said.

"You, too," she replied.

They were all beginning to look a little worse for wear. The short stop they'd made in Centra had given them time to clean up, but the effects of that were fading now. Seifer wasn't wearing his trench coat or shoes and had his vest half unzipped. His hair was sticking up at wild angles, following the familiar furrows his fingers traveled as he leaned back in his seat and tangled his hands behind his head.

"Let's go up top," Quistis suggested. "Get some air."

Seifer stood up and popped the hatch in the ceiling above them, then pulled down the ladder. It clanked against the floor and a flood of fresh sea air rushed in. Climbing up and out, into the wind and the sun and really feeling their speed as they zipped across the seas had become Quistis's favorite thing to do. She perched herself on the lip of the hatch and held on tight against the roar of air. Seifer followed up not far behind and sat beside her, one of his hands gripping the machine gun in front of them for support. Their feet dangled free into the cabin below, brushing against each other.

"Look at that!" Quistis shouted and pointed to a haze on the horizon, a shift in air temperature that was obscuring land nearby.

"We've been passing by them all day!" Seifer shouted back. "We're in the island chain now!"

"Almost there, then!" she shouted back and cautiously stood up, seeing if she could get a better view. The haze slowly resolved itself and began to lift, revealing a rocky shore topped with trees. Did it even have a name, Quistis wondered? No one had explored the southern sea since Esthar's empire had collapsed under Adel. Half of the planet was ocean. Who knew how many islands like this were out there? Who knew what sort of unknown life they might harbor?

The engine shifting gears made her lose her balance, and she fell back against Seifer who grabbed her arms and held her steady.

"Are we slowing down?"

"This must be it!" he shouted back.

It? Quistis leaned forward as Seifer crawled back down the ladder behind her into the vessel and watched as the island in front of them grew larger and larger until it was taking up the whole horizon. They slowed down until the wind was no longer howling past hear ears.

"Adrian!" Seifer bellowed below. "Get up! We're here!"

Embarrassed that she'd lost track of their progress so completely, Quistis crawled down the ladder after Seifer and sat down at the helm to turn off the auto-pilot. Once she switched to manual, a glowing radar screen came to life which outlined both the island's coast and a small underwater reef running on concave side of the crescent.

"See a beach?" Quistis asked and throttled down so they could avoid the reef.

"Nope. Nothing but rocky cliffs all along this side," Seifer replied from the co-pilot's chair. "Other side doesn't look great either."

"We'll have to find a place to anchor then. How about an inlet? Something protected."

"On the other side this bluff here, there's something that might work. Water's pretty shallow, closed in by the reef," he replied and pointed out the location on her screen. "We're headed right for it."

"Looks good to me," Quistis said. Behind her, Adrian was up and getting their supplies together. The ship was a bit of a mess after so many days worth of travel, and he was throwing pillows, shoes, and old food wrappers out of the way. There was urgency in his movements, the same excitement that had Quistis's heart pounding in her ears as she guided them around the reef and into Seifer's inlet. Through the open hatch above, she could hear the familiar cries of seagulls and the waves breaking against the shore.

"I can't find your whip," Adrian said.

"At the foot of her bed," Seifer replied.

A few seconds later, the other man shouted, "Got it!" and resumed stuffing their packs.

Dropping anchor took only a few button presses. There was a bump as it released and abruptly hit the bottom of the shallow harbor, then burrowed itself further into the seabed. Once it was properly secured, Quistis shut down and locked the navigation system, then turned around to find Adrian and Seifer bright faced and ready to go.

"Check over your junctions," she told them. "Remember this thing is supposed to be strong against magic, so lean heavily toward attack and defense."

"We got it," Seifer said and handed her an overstuffed, blue backpack. It was heavy, but was better than taking a chance. This far from any source of backup, and with this being the first real mission she'd been in charge of for months, she didn't want to go in unprepared. She pulled her SeeD jacket on, then the pack on top of it.

"Okay then. Let's go."

They had to slip first into the sea, which was so utterly clear that Quistis could see a red starfish crawling along the sand underneath her as she treaded water. With no beach to land on, they were going to have to scale the cliffs that made up the shore. Adrian was the best climber, so he went first, searching for an easy path across the rocks and up the small but slippery precipice. It was a bigger challenge than it looked. Where Quistis wasn't struggling to find footholds, she was fighting against slime and crumbling bits of stone. Her wet clothes and the sea breeze helped to keep her cool, but even so, Quistis could feel the power of the sun beating down on her as she climbed.

When Adrian heaved himself over the top, he tossed down a line behind him, and Quistis was more than ready for the respite. Wrapping it around her arm, she used it to lever herself up. The rope bit into her skin, but she was thankful for it — muscles she'd never used before were already beginning to ache and her finger tips were red with scrapes. Squinting against the sun, she looked up at Seifer above her. He had his trench coat balled up on top of his pack and his arms glistened with sea spray.

At the top of the cliff, Adrian reached out with one hand to help her.

"How are we going to get back down that?" she asked.

"Rappel," he replied and smiled. "Don't worry. Down is a whole lot easier than up."

Though she was concerned that they wouldn't be able to get a carcass down off the cliffs in order to transport it to Centra, she didn't say anything. That was a bridge she would cross when they came to it — if they came to it. This island certainly looked like it could house a monster. The interior of the crescent spread out before them now, thick with jungle. A few trees grew right up against the edge of the cliff, their roots curled around solid rock. They hung there desperately, gnarled and untamed and unwilling to die. The dark forest was no less imposing. Bugs formed thick clouds around one flowering tree, the swarm creating a disquieting hum.

"We should try to stay close together," Quistis suggested.

The jungle enveloped them as they stepped into it. If she hadn't known better, Quistis would have thought that the trees stretched forever, a primeval world filled with muddy rivers, waterfalls, and dinosaurs. It might as well have been for how long it was going to take them to cover ground this dense. The humidity was stifling and every leaf she brushed by seemed to be serrated. The long, thin cuts they made along her arms attracted small, bright green flies.

"Tell me we have a plan on how to go about finding this thing," Adrian said.

Seifer laughed. "Maybe it will find us."

"Either way works for me," Adrian replied.

"Just keep an eye out for any sign of a large animal," Quistis said. "Tracks. Scat. Remains of a kill. The DNA report showed this thing's related to a lot of dragons, so they'll probably have similar habits. So there might be tree marking like blue dragons do. Things like that."

As they marched on across the island, the air grew hotter and the bugs increasingly troublesome. Quistis thought she could feel them in her hair and all over her body, setting her skin to crawling. She scratched and slapped, but the feeling didn't go away. It tormented her until she broke, tossing off her backpack to squeal and turn her head upside down, thrashing her hands through her hair.

"What's wrong?" Seifer asked.

"Ugh! Bugs! I feel like they're all over me!"

He seized her flailing hands. "Stop. Calm down."

It was a struggle to swallow her unease, but Seifer quickly let her go and began searching through her hair with his fingertips. Adrian joined in, and they worked their way across her head before shaking out her jacket and proclaiming her bug free. By the time they were done, she was calm and completely embarrassed.

"Thanks," she muttered.

"Leave the jacket off," Adrian suggested. "I'll carry it for you." He folded it up carefully before tucking it into a little bit of extra space at the top of his backpack. Even in the dirty jungle, caked with filth, he was handsome and charming. The way he smiled at her, he might as well have been an actor on a sound stage, every smudge carefully painted on so that he'd still look damn good. Seifer, on the other hand, was getting rumpled. His hair had begun to take on a life of its own, overcoming the gel he used to keep it slicked back to frizz in the humidity.

As they continued walking, something small and naked scampered out in front of them and into the bushes — some kind of lizard. Then another one, slightly larger followed after it.

"Is it possible that the monster isn't as big as we think?" Seifer suggested. "I haven't seen anything for something big to eat…unless it eats bugs like some sort of whale collecting plankton."

"How could something small kill a man like that?" Adrian asked.

"The poison," Seifer replied. "Like a snakebite. Dissolves the flesh around the bite. It was long enough before we found this guy…maybe the poison made this bite look a lot bigger than it really was."

Adrian thought about this for a second before saying, "Nah. I think it's more likely it's just not on this island."

"Hyne, I hope not." Quistis sighed. "I'd hate to think we're going through all this for nothing."

"Yeah," Seifer agreed. "Don't jinx it."

The trees hadn't parted or thinned when they found themselves up against a sheer wall of rock, a ridge along the mountains that formed the spine of the island. Vines scaled the crag, but Adrian looked up it with his arms crossed and his brows knotted with frustration.

"No point climbing this," he said.

Quistis shrugged. "We can follow them all the way to the other end of the island."

Stopping to check her compass, Quistis let Adrian take the lead. A loud, inhuman shriek stopped her in mid-step as she moved to follow him, and she looked up just in time to notice something large and mottled-brown come out of the trees at them. It was hunched forward, running on just its back feet, with a large, muscular tail swinging out behind it. Far out in front, Adrian didn't have time to react before the beast was on top of him. With one swipe, it knocked him to the ground, then skidded to a stop and swung around, its tail hitting Quistis in the gut and throwing her back against a tree. She was disoriented for a moment, her head swimming.

Distantly, she was aware of both Adrian and Seifer yelling.

"Out of the way!" Seifer was saying. "Out of the way!"

The monster had turned to look at him, forgetting Adrian who scrambled, bleeding, to his feet and over to Quistis.

The sky dimmed, and out of the sudden clouds above them, manifested from the even darker depths of Seifer's mind, Bahamut roared free. They were protected from the horrible attack that fired down out of the dragon's ethereal maw. Flame and debris fanned out with the impact of the attack, but the monster bellowed and shook it off, seemingly unharmed.

"What the fuck…?"

The monster dipped its wide head, glaring at them with yellow eyes. It was enjoying this, Quistis thought. Then it flexed its claws and leapt at them. Seifer darted out of the way and Quistis nailed it right in the face with a blast of ultima, the strongest magic she had stocked. It slowed the creature down, made the skin on its nose blister, but did little else.

Ducking and rolling, Seifer managed to open a shallow gash in its thigh. Blood oozed out and painted the edge of Hyperion's blade. As it wheeled around, Quistis lashed out with her whip, catching it on the shoulder. The skin didn't break, but she saw its muscles jump in response to the sharp pain. As Seifer attacked again from the front, it jumped back, knocking Quistis to the ground again as if she were nothing, a tiny rag doll. She landed on top of a rotten log with a loud crunch, and she wasn't sure if it was the sound of the log disintegrating underneath her or the sound of her own ribs breaking. But her head hit hard and blackness quickly flooded in around the edges of her vision.

Burning pain in her chest came a heartbeat later and drove the darkness back. She fought to come back to her senses, all too aware of the ongoing struggle between Seifer and the monster.

"Quistis!" He seemed to be calling from far away.

Two hands heaved her painfully up off the ground and the entire world went out of focus around Adrian's face as he looked down at her. He wasn't looking well. In fact, he looked very ill as he heaved her up and out of harm's way. Panting, he deposited her on the ground again and then collapsed beside her. Something was wrong with him, she realized. Something a lot worse than broken ribs.

"Quistis!" Seifer yelled again. "I need you to distract it for a second!"

Distract it? How the hell was she supposed to do that? She could hardly move.

Foregoing the healing spell that popped into her brain, she accessed instead an offensive move she'd learned from a monster in Galbadia. Her muscles tightened and convulsed as the spell built in her. Hoping to God she wouldn't puncture one of her lungs, she let it grow and grow and grow before finally letting it loose — a burst of electricity that radiated out from her to the monster, seizing its central nervous system.

Seifer was fast, faster and more agile than she'd ever seen him before. He was on top of the beast, climbing up its back and wrapping his legs around its throat. With all of his strength, he shoved Hyperion down into the back of the monster's neck. It bit painfully into the beast's tough hide. As it reared and bellowed, trying to dislodge Seifer from its back, he held firm. A manic look crossed his face as he held on and continued to work his slippery blade through tense muscle.

He was jamming it now between vertebrae, and the monster's eyes rolled back in its head with the pain.

It thrashed and clawed. But Seifer was determined and wild. He gave a hard shove, veins bulging in his arms and neck, and with what seemed like superhuman strength, he worked Hyperion through bone to sever the creature's thready spinal cord. A death spasm, and it slumped to the ground, leaving Seifer to roll off, panting and exhausted, covered in blood.

He stumbled over to Quistis.

"Are you okay?"

"No." She shook her head. "And neither is Adrian."

"Fuck." He collapsed onto his knees and began drying his hands against his pants. "What's wrong?"

"I think Adrian's been poisoned," she replied. "We need to flush out his wounds and get some antidote in him fast or he's going to die."

"Give me your pack."

She shrugged out of it, and Seifer dumped out its contents onto the forest floor. Some of the bottles had broken during the fight, so everything was soaked in a solution of potion and elixir. But he found one antidote that was still unharmed and uncapped it. Adrian was out cold, his skin pale and clammy, his hair matted to his head. Seifer had to roll him over and sit him up to empty the bottle into his mouth. He came to a little, choked and coughed, but swallowed before passing out again. They couldn't tell if it helped. He still looked on the edge of death.

"What about you?" Seifer asked, looking across Adrian's prone body to Quistis. "Can you walk?"

She pressed gently at her ribs, not sure exactly where her injury was. She ached all over.

"I think so. I'd cure myself, but if anything's broken…" Using healing magic on a broken bone was dangerous since it could fuse the break back together again before it was properly set. She needed an x-ray first. Still, considering the circumstances, she thought she'd take the risk and downed a potion. It didn't erase the pain completely, but the relief was enough to allow her to catch her breath again.

"I guess we found the right island," Seifer said, his expression dull with exhaustion and despair.

They had. And they'd stumbled right into hell.