AN: hmm, I've just looked back at the ANs for the earlier chpts, and my muses quite helpfully pointed out the obvious – I haven't delivered on the darkness/gore... So, this is my attempt to get my muses paws/hooves/talons/hands/appendages bloody :)

Book Two of the Sorcerer Arc Death's Angel Chapter Ten The Mighty, Fallen

Kylari paced up and down in front of Rinoa and her captive. She wasn't sure why she thought the Galbadian headmaster would know anything of any use, after all, hadn't he meekly caved in to Ultemecia? But... They had reinstated him, so, maybe he did know something of use. It was just a question of what. Unfortunately for Martine, his was one of the multitude of minds that Kylari couldn't just waltz into and take the information she wanted.

There was also the issue of what to do with Rinoa whilst she interrogated Martine. It wouldn't be pretty, and Kylari knew how squeamish the raven-haired sorceress had been, although she seemed pretty bloodthirsty in the way she was eyeing the helpless SeeD. Now was not the time to see if that squeamishness had been lost though. Later, when she had the resources and time to gradually work through her repertoire and see when the girl grossed out... So, what to do with her until then? Hmm, something to serve more than one purpose maybe? Yes...

"I want you to bring me Quistis Trepe and Zell Dincht." Kylari stopped pacing to address Rinoa. The weaker sorceress kept her eyes on the floor and nodded meekly, feeling a distinctly regretful sensation in her gut. But if Rinoa was clear on one thing, it was that, no matter how much she wanted to see Kylari torture Martine, her lot was to obey orders, not protest them.

"As you command, my Mother." Still not looking at either Kylari or Martine, Rinoa turned on her heel and stalked from the room.

Kylari watched Rinoa stalk away. That the golden eyes had never once left the floor did not bother her. Best that her creation understand exactly where her position was. One slip and Kylari would tear the girl's heart out and take her powers without a moments hesitation. Well, once her usefulness was done anyway.

Dismissing Rinoa from her mind, Kylari turned back to the kneeling form of Martine.

The sorceress gestured and another thin line of red appeared on an already blood-soaked chest. Martine was panting, his lungs cramped by the unnatural position he was chained in, and his skin, where it had yet to receive the sorceress's attention, was gleaming with sweat.

"Do you really expect me to believe that you know nothing?" Kylari asked, eyes narrowed as she stalked around Martine's helpless form. Martine didn't, couldn't, answer. He was struggling to get enough breath to form a decent scream, and the pain had fogged his mind beyond coherency. Not that it mattered. She wouldn't believe him whatever he said. Kylari was expecting him to lie to her, expecting a 'vain' show of SeeD defiance. That Martine might have been telling the truth when he had protested that he knew nothing, never even crossed her mind.

Frowning, Kylari waved her hand again. A deeper cut appeared, slicing across earlier wounds. Martine finally found the breath to scream. The effort left him panting hoarsely again, convulsing as an unseen fist slammed into his chest, causing him to retch and cough. Watching impassively, Kylari began to lay down more cuts on flesh she had, so far, avoided.

By the time she finished, Martine was, albeit barely, still alive. Still cruelly conscious. There wasn't a patch of skin left on his naked body, except for where the chains lay, and where his back lay over the large barrel-like object that he was chained to. Blood lay, congealing in places, like a second skin, oozing out of every broken capillary and vein in a futile attempt to clot and begin the healing process.

Kylari still didn't have the answers she wanted. Martine had protested his innocence, when she gave him the chance, at every stage. Even when she had finished placing her strategic cuts, and forced him to peel away his own skin, he had only been able to sob and scream that he didn't know anything.

The sorceress wasn't sure what to believe. That she had been, wrong, and he really did not know anything, or that she had underestimated the SeeDs and Martine was managing to hold out on her. But she was a sorceress, which gave her a distinct advantage. Any other torturer, at this stage, would have been forced to admit defeat. But not her. Oh no, never her.

With a twisted smile that Martine, unable to avoid with no eyelids, nearly passed out in fear from, Kylari began to chant. Martine felt the skin on his back stretching, crawling across the rest of him. Kylari stopped chanting, watching as the skin spread to slowly re-cover Martine's body. As long as he didn't actually die on her, Kylari could bring him backwards and forwards between perfect health and the brink of death with impunity.

But Kylari had no interest in prolonging Martine's torture. All she wanted to know was whether he really knew anything or nothing. And she was beginning to suspect that it was the latter. An error of judgement on Rinoa's part. But one, although she would never admit it, that Kylari thought she too might have made. After all, why would Garden reward a coward who had surrendered to the enemy once before?

Kylari clapped her hands and, as the fixed ends of the chains binding Martine floated free, gestured. Helpless to resist the forces acting on his body, Martine, glowering, was dragged to the cage and thrown inside. The door slammed shut, and the chains sprang away, releasing him as if he were repulsive to them. The kidnapped Galbadian Headmaster glared defiantly, his spirit also having recovered with his skin, but he knew better than to touch the door. It wasn't locked, in the normal sense. But he had learnt the hard way that the magic wards around it couldn't be avoided and caused bone-breaking convulsions.

"Now, I'll ask you one more time, what is SeeD's true purpose?" Kylari paced around the cage, watching Martine turn to follow her. His eyes were haunted now, wary, scared of what she might do next. He no longer had the will to resist her but...

"I don't know." Still the same protestation of ignorance. Kylari growled. After all he had gone through it had to be true. Unfortunately for Martine, she wasn't going to let him go just because, for once, someone hadn't been lying to her.

"Then you will help me find out." There was no response. Kylari shrugged. "I did not mean that you had a choice in the matter." Martine's eyes widened as the sorceress turned away. There were some spells that were too complex to commit to memory, and too infrequently used besides.

The syllables of the words seemed to take on a life of their own as they were spoken. Martine could almost see half-formed ghosts begin to cluster around the cage. Even the language, whatever it was, had never been meant to be uttered by a human throat. There were strange breaks and ululations, glottal stops and weird keening sounds all mixed in with a harsher undertone.

The silence when Kylari ceased the chant was worse than the chant itself. Martine couldn't see anything, but the sorceress could. She cackled as she watched him turning around and around, able to sense the presence of some malevolent being, but not yet able to see it.

The silence was replaced by Martine's screams as the nether-ghoul pounced on him. Flesh blackened and charred in places, simply falling away in others. Around his chest the flesh just vanished, leaving only scraps of skin clinging to the white bone of ribs. His face began to melt, literally, the features flowing and pooling further down than they should ever have been. Both eyes were obscured, and the bone of his nose seemed to float in a smooth expanse of skin.

A ghostly hand swiped at his chin, at the pooling facial flesh, ripping them away to leave the lower jaw exposed and bloody. Then the blisters began to form, pushing out clumps of hair across his scalp and peppering his face.

Kylari was satisfied. With a word she called the nether-ghoul away from its prey. Half-sated and correspondingly half-visible, the creature growled in protest, but could not disobey the sorceress who had summoned it. Kylari smirked. There was little doubt in her mind that Leonhart would be able to destroy the creature easily now that it was nearly real, but he would still have to give himself away to do so. She had the ideal guard for the prisoners that she would soon be 'entertaining'.

"It'll be good to get back to Garden." Quistis yawned from the back of the car. She and Zell – her husband, she thought with a slight smile – had been out of contact for three weeks on a deep cover mission in Galbadia. Admittedly, the assignment hadn't been that bad, but she was still looking forwards to seeing familiar faces, and not having to think twice before speaking.

"Yeah." Zell agreed wholeheartedly. Quistis' giggle at his vehemence collided with another yawn, and she coughed and spluttered for a minute as she tried to get herself back under control. Zell shot her an amused glance in the rear-view mirror.

His attention was dragged forcefully back to the car as the engine suddenly rattled loudly and died. Zell groaned. It was typical, they managed to complete the mission on time and without incident, and, with two days leave already granted by Squall, things decided to go wrong. Fortunately it was only early evening, and the weather was nice enough that they could hike to Deling City easily enough – if he couldn't fix whatever was wrong...

"So do we start walking?" Quistis peered over her husband's shoulder into the car's engine. Zell sighed and straightened.

"I guess. I don't know what's wrong with it." A frown creased his forehead, and he absently ran a greasy hand through his blond hair, leaving a thick black streak though the dyed locks. Quistis stifled a giggle at his appearance as they started walking towards the city...

Half a mile down the road and they still couldn't pick out Deling City's dark mass. Normally at this time it would have been lit by a few scattered lights, but the entire plain was dark. Of course, it wasn't impossible that there'd been a power-outage...

Zell and Quistis shared a frown. Something didn't feel right about this...

By the time they reached the great plains where Deling City should have been, it was clear that something spectacular – and horrific – had happened. Deling City's massive bulk was no more. Instead there was an area of disturbed earth where the city had once been. It was almost as if the earth had risen up against the city and swallowed it whole.

"A tragedy." Both Zell and Quistis automatically swung around, dropping into their respective defensive stances. Rinoa ignored them, staring at the disturbed earth beyond. All that remained of Deling City. Galbadia's once proud capital. Her voice sounded strange, but whether the edge of glee was the threat of hysteria or something more sinister – neither Zell nor Quistis could tell. She also looked different somehow, taller and more childlike – but in the gathering gloom it was hard to make out specific details. After all, they hadn't seen her for a while.

"Rinoa? What happened?" Rinoa arched a regal eyebrow at them both.

"You don't know..." she let the sentence trail off, realising that they'd been on a mission and genuinely didn't know what had happened. Even better, they clearly didn't know anything about herself or Kylari. It was the chance of a lifetime, to catch these two unawares. She could have such fun with them, fun she'd been denied with Martine...but she was under orders. Kylari wanted these two, and wanted them undamaged in transit.

Unfortunately she still didn't have a good poker face.

"What's going on Rinoa?" The sorceress attempted to look innocent, then gave in as it became clear that they weren't going to fall for it. She sneered at them, allowing her wings to explode from her back. Instantly their suspicions hardened. Something was wrong. The once creamy-white wings were now a sickly red-brown, and the tips themselves looked as though they'd been dipped in blood.

"War's going on, Zell..." Rinoa snarled at him, having accepted the new colour of her wings with a glance. "Your precious commander buried Galbadia, and you're both coming with me." Her head tilted to one side as she regarded them, a twisted smile appearing on her lips. "But don't worry, dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori." (1)

There was no time for either SeeD to react. The world began to spin, and darkness fell with a thud of finality.

Kylari stared at the two SeeDs chained to the wall that Martine had only recently vacated. Her eyes narrowed, and her lips thinned as she confirmed what she had suspected. Like the Galbadian Headmaster, the minds of these SeeDs were also closed to her. The sorceress shrugged the irritation aside and turned to Rinoa, a smile on her face.

"Well done." Rinoa's eyes glowed with pleasure at the praise. "I have another task for you. A more difficult task. Do you think you can do it well?" Rinoa nodded eagerly. "Good." Kylari purred.

Rinoa listened to her instructions, then took her leave, vanishing in a shower of dark sparks just as Quistis and Zell began to awake. Kylari cackled, startling the SeeDs into full awareness. She was going to have far more fun with these two than she had with Martine. As Zell and Quistis stared in horror at the sorceress, Kylari smiled cruelly.

"Look at the saviours of the world tremble. Oh, how the mighty have fallen..."

AN: woohoo! dances in celebration Finally managed to bully my muses into letting me write this chapter :) Hehehe, much gore for Martine and similar in store for Quistis and Zell sighs I'm all happy cause my muses gave in before I did :o :p

(1) 'Dulce et Decorum est' is the title of a poem (I forget by whom), which contains the lines 'Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori'. This is latin, and means 'it is sweet and right to die for one's country'. The poem, I hasten to add is about war (WW1 I think), and is using it in a sarcastic sense.

Anyway, three chapters to go!