Chapter Nine

Take these plastic people, read their lips than let it linger

Is there anything that makes it sound sincere?

Tightly hold your hand, take a deep breath, give them the finger

Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite clear?

I remember falling

I remember marching

Like a one man army

Through the blaze

I remember coughing

I believe in something

I don't want to remember falling for their lies

Our Lady Peace-One Man Army.

The room was massive. Its slick dark stone shone coldly in the dim light. Nobody questioned how such a large fortress got to be in this lonely place. They were just glad to have the protection of strong stone walls around them.

The gate they had entered by was the only one. The soldiers spread out, moving deeper into the room. The remnants of crumbling painted plaster and old tapestries clung to the wall. Seifer touched one and it fell away in heavy sheets. He picked up a stick from the floor, wrapped the cloth around it and touched his lighter to the rags.

The fortress looked no better in the bright light. The walls were crumbling. Pools of ice water dotted the floor. Ivy wrapped the walls like a winding sheet. Trees pierced the floor.

Quistis stared up at the rafters. Bats rustled in the darkness. At least, she hoped it was bats.

The soldiers huddled in the centre of the room. Seifer kept his distance, but nobody had said anything yet. That had to be a good thing.

The small Galbadian soldier..Isaac? dug an elbow in her ribs and stepped back with a murmured word of apology. Animal eyes gleamed in the darkness. The wolves seemed reluctant to come in. As the last of

the Galbadian's magic faded, they turned and vanished.

The Galbadians turned as one to face the more immediate threat.

" fucking traitor…"

"…sorceress"

"Almasy.."

"dead….."

"This is all your fault," one of them said to Seifer."If it wasn't for you we wouldn't be in these woods in the first place."

Seifer's voice, was razor edged and defiant. "We saved your lives. You were all running scared. You'd have got cut to pieces in those woods if it wasn't for us." He sounded ready to take on the world one punch at a time.

Quistis sighed and headed towards the Galbadians. As she reached the small group one of them soun around nervously. "There's something in here with us."

"There's nothing here. Fucking crap lot of mercenaries you are. You"re scared of your own shadows."

Seifer tossed his ersatz torch into a corned of the room. It crashed into the lowest step of a flight of stairs and lay flickering gently, giving off plumes of black oily smoke smelling of mould and mist."Scared of the dark?"

One of the Galbadians stepped forwards."That's the least of your problems. You're under arrest." He raised a gun. "It's a good job Martime wants you alive."

Seifer grinned.

The soldier looked down.

Seifer's knife tapped the Galbadian's crotch. "Put the gun down. Slowly. I make involuntary muscle movements whenever I get shot."

"You"re outnumbered." the Galbadian whispered.

Seifer's grin widened. "Yes, but my knife's at your balls. Put the gun down."

The Galbadian lowered the pistol.

"Kick it away."

The soldier's boots scraped on the stone as he attempted to kick the gun away without moving his body. Quistis scooped the weapon up and slid it into her belt.

The torch that smouldered unnoticed in the corner of the room began to burn with a cold blue flame. Seifer let the Galbadian go and stepped back.

The soldier couldn't resist another dig. "We'll get you."

Quistis sighed. "In case you haven't noticed we are in a life or death situation here. Seeing as I outrank all of you.."

"In Balamb…" one of the Galbadians muttered.

"Seeing as I outrank all of you, "Quistis continued,"unless anyone thinks they're more qualified?

The soldiers shrugged. Nobody said anything.

Seifer grinned. "Me?"

"Anyone who is actually more qualified and just doesn"t have an overactive ego and a mission to piss me off, Hyne help me?" Quistis said.

"You're in command," the Galbadian grudgingly agreed. He jabbed a finger at Seifer. "But he comes with us afterwards."

"No fucking way!"

"Seifer," Qustis said, "shut up! Let me put this in perspective. In about twelve hours, a Balamb Garden transport is going to come right here. And if you all want to be on it, I suggest that you behave." Her eyes raked over them. "After all, I don't know if there's room for all of you."

"How?"

She flicked a glance at Seifer. "Seifer, allow me to demonstrate."

"What?" He raised his head.

Quistis sighed. "Hyne help me." Her hand moved towards her wrist.

Seifer backed off quickly. "Oh, that. Quistis, don't you fuckinaaaaaah."

The Galbadians looked at , as one man, they turned and looked at Quistis.

A muffled "You bitch" floated up from the floor.

"Seifer's fitted with a tracking device. It's a transmitter that sends radio waves to Garden. Unfortunately our com unit got KO'd back in the woods, but they should still be able to track him to within a metre. The unit's linked to my life vital signs-I die and it explodes. So just in case any of you even considered trying to take me out and making a run with World's Most Wanted over there, forget it. All we have to do is wait until they come to pick us up. Twenty four hours should do it. And we need every man we can get."

There was a reluctant murmur of assent. Seifer peeled himself from the floor, muttering curses, and Quistis touched his shoullder. "Seifer, we need to talk."

He glared at her. "It's not like I'm going anywhere, is it?"

She walked over to a corner. He followed her and leaned up against the wall beside her.

"That lot over there. You need to watch them, cause they're not over there having group hugs."

Quistis ignored him. "May I remind you that threatening another SeeD with an offensive weapon is worth demotion to cadet status and a formal court-martial?"

Seifer shrugged. "Tough luck I'm not a SeeD. And, at the risk of sounding twelve, they did it first. We'd be safer without them around at all. We should just go."

Quistis nearly agreed. "Just how long do you think we"d last out there? You saw the monsters."

"Simple. This lot"ll be the bait."

"So we should just leave them to die?"

He shrugged."You said it."

"That'd be as good as murder. We can't-"

He interrupted. "I can if the alternative's waiting for the monsters while those pussies work out the best way to stab me in the back. I- Hyne, what the hell is that?"

She spun around. An eerie blue light spread across the room. It glistened like salt thrown into a flame. It managed to be both beautiful and completely out of place.

The nearest Galbadians noticed it too,and their attention started to slip from Seifer to the azure haze. One man backed away as someone grabbed Seifer's. "What did you do?"

Seifer shook him off. "What the fuck?"

"It was your fault. You threw the torch."

"That's no fire-" Quistis cut in.

"Something's not right," Isak interrupted. He watched the smoke surprisingly calmly.

"No shit," Seifer said sarcastically.

Quistis reached for her whip at her belt. She uncoiled Save The Queen and then checked the Galbadian pistol at her belt, flipping the safety off. Something prickled at the corners of her mind, demanding entry. It felt like a GF, but it wasn't. Quistis knew that much.

The blue fire curled into a cone.

Quistis wondered about convection currents.

Seifer raised his right hand. He had acquired a Galbadian pistol during their flight through the woods. Now he raised the gun and flicked a sidelong glance at Quistis, his finger already tightening on the trigger. She nodded and pulled her own trigger. Two bullets cut through the clouds of smoke and pinged off the wall behind it as the smoke eddied and reformed. It was followed by a dozen more from the Galbadians. Bullets struck sparks from the flagstones.

The smoke curled up into the shape of a man. The air tasted thick with magic and Quistis automatically tried to draw it. It didn't work. From the puzzled looks on the faces of the Galbadians, they had the same problem.

She reached for the magic again, but there was nothing. It slipped away as soon as she tried to grasp it. The breeze tasted of burned sugar and ozone. She tried to cast and hit the same barrier.

Nothing.

A frown creased her face.

The blue haze solidified further. There was a soldier, now, standing where the light had been. He looked familiar. Quistis realized that he'd been in the clearing when the Galbadian threatened reached over. "That's the oldier that held the gun on you."

"I noticed," Seifer said grimly. "He looks fuckin' different, though."

"More dead." Isak cut in.

"Yeah." Seifer said slowly.

The soldier's skin was pale and waxy. His uniform was torn and bloody. Viscera poked through holes in his jacket. His throat was a bloody mess, ripped open down to the white tracheal rings. As she watched, the larynx bobbed and the corpse coughed. A trickle of dark blood ran from the corner of is mouth.

"What the fuck is going on?" Seifer swore.

The soldier's eyes rolled, very slowly, back in his head, and then rolled up again.

Seifer shivered "What's your plan now, Instructor?"

She shook her head slowly.

Seifer snarled. He flicked a knife out of the sleeve of his coat, weighted it in his hand for a second and then threw it so quickly that Quistis barely saw his arm move.

The soldier snatched the knife out of the air by its blade. Dark blood trickled down its hand.

Seifer groaned. "Fuck."

Quistis muttered "You"ve got better."

"Thanks." Seifer said.

The soldier cleared his throat again and spoke. It said "Thank you"

The Galbadians turned as one and looked at Seifer accusingly.

He shrugged. "Nothing to do with me."

"You are magic users. All of you. You came here. You gave me power."

Something growled from the doorway.

Everybody spun around.

Five wolves slunk through the gaping arch. In the flickering blue light, they looked far less like real wolves than they had done in the feet still didn't seem to touch the ground as they moved. The dead soldier was standing with its back to the door. It never looked round as the animals came up behind it. The wolves crept around and into the shadow of the corpse, where they slowly merged with the shadow itself. After a few seconds their bodies fused with the shadow of the creature until there was nothing left but little glints of wolf eyes, and then not even that.

"You all held magic in your minds. And it has been so long…"

"Those wolves were yours?" asked a rawboned Galbadian woman. She stepped forwards, staring at the soldier's body as if she couldn't believe her eyes. "Magri? Are you in there?"

The soldier looked down at her with something approximating surprise.

She whispered "What are you?"

"You would call me monster. I was a Guardian Force, many years ago…" It paused. "You will have heard of them."

The girl reached into her coat and pulled out a gun. She pushed the barrel up underneath the monster's chin. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

The monster sniggered.

Before she could release the trigger of the gun it…reached.

There was no other wa Quistis could describe it. She felt a gathering sense of pressure in the hall and then a sharp snap.

The Galbadian woman screamed. The pistol dropped from her hand. A dark bruise appeared on her forehead. Her eyes were wide and they stared at nothing. She twitched convulsively and collapsed. A thin trail of blood trickled from her nose.

Everyone started moving at once. Some soldiers drew weapons. A few ran forwards. A few more ran backwards, away from the monster.

The soldier reached out and flicked one finger gently.

Everything stopped.

Quistis blinked.

She was held motionless by a strange force. Isak was frozen in mid-stride next to her. Seifer stood like a statue at her right hand. His teeth were gritted and a muscle twitched in his jaw.

Quistis tried to move her hand. She couldn't.

Seifer's stomach felt like a lead weight. He watched as the monster limped between the frozen bodies of the Galbadian squard, staring into each motionless face like it was searching for someone-or for something. He wasn't sure what.

"Magic," it said a few moments later. "I need magic." It peered at a pair of Galbadian cadets and swept them aside as casually as Seifer would have extinguished a match. They toppled and lay motionlessly; certainly injured, possibly dead.

Quistis's face was a frozen mask.

Seifer had an idea.

It was a stupid idea; the kind of idea that he'd tried unsuccessfully to ignore for most of his twenty years. It was, he thought, the sort of idea that was going to get him killed.

He wondered whether Quistis' GF-junctioning would be enough to catch the monster's attention. Before he'd even thought it through he said hoarsely, "Take me."

The words echoed out across the room.

The monster didn't seem to move. It whisked across the room and reappeared in from of Seifer. The soldier's left eye had been goughed out. Blood trailed down its cheeks.

Adrenaline pumped through Seifer's veins like cold fire. He shut his eyes for a moment. "I said, I'll do it."

The monster cocked its head. Seifer didn't know what he was most scared of;that the monster would reject him, or that it would find him suitable. He realized that he had no idea what he had just volunteered for.

It reached out and touched his shoulder with a thin hand that felt like a bundle of dried twigs. Seifer felt a sharp pain in his temples. He didn't remember falling, just just the sharp crack of his knees hitting the cobblestones followed by his outflung hands. Memories of the first time that Edea had insinuated herself into his head came back to him, bitter and sharp as glass shards and wormwood. He pulled himself up to his knees, kept his head down.

The monster loomed above him like a revenant, "You will do," it said, managing to sounf as if it had bestowed a great favor on Seifer. The pain inhis head intensified. He couldn't even look up to meet Quistis' eyes.

The monster traced a symbol in thin air.

Everyone else vanished.