Under another circumstance the fall down into Andross's underground domain would have been enjoyable; the shaft only dropped straight doiwn for ten feet before curving out steeply into a steel slide. As she fell Celestra could still vaguely see the light from Venom's surface, but the further down she traveled the more dim things became. At last the chute opened up into a small, torchlit chamber, spilling the assassin out onto a rug strewn with moldy hay. The braziers that gave light to the cavern were more than a little ominous, for the fire burned a mysterious blue and was set into a figure of a spindly hand with great claws.
A rustle wafted up to her ears from behind, and she side-stepped the hay; Fox slid out of the chute and landed unceremoniously on his rump.
"I heard pounding," he informed her, straightening and peering uneasily back up the shaft. "And I can't see the light anymore . . ."
"For some reason the grate must have sealed off the entrance again," Celestra hypothesized, pounding one fist into her outstretched palm. "I've got the key, so the others are stuck up there."
"You mean we're stuck down here," Fox corrected darkly.
Celestra withdrew her plasma laser guns and started off to the other end of the chamber. "Sure, if you want to be pessimistic. Anyway, Andross must have been keeping surveillance on that chute and didn't expect us to find a way in. When we did, he probably sealed it shut again." Her boots were silent as death as she padded up to the next door, carefully inspecting it for traps. When none presented themselves she threw her weight behind the heavy door and the two of them pressed into the next room.
It was only a single, narrow hallway that ended in a blindingly bright, cubic room. Cautiously the alert pair made their way to it until they were in the center of the chamber, squinting around cluelessly.
As they stood dumbfounded an adamantite door sprang up from the floor, blocking them within the cube and snuffing out the overbearing light. Before either of them could speak the cube set to spinning both horizontally and vertically, sending Celestra and Fox tumbling helplessly into each other, the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Their screams echoed off the closed-in walls, but just when they were both at the point of nausea the whirling structure ended its tirade, prostrating them limply on the floor. The lights clicked back on, this time illuminating four corridors around them.
"Welcome, Marquette, McCloud," boomed a low, deep voice quavering with amusement. "I will take this opportunity to inform you that I greatly despise intruders, and the two of you were already in my highest disfavor."
Celestra and Fox drunkenly regained their stances, weapons at the ready in shaking hands as they peered all around for the speaker. "Where are you hiding, Andross?!"
"Oh, I am closer than you think." That vague answer caused the mercenary leader to swallow hard. "Welcome to Venom's City Proper, but I like to call it the Maze of Indecision. There are, as you can see, four paths you can choose to tread--one leads you back to where you came, one leads to the Eyes of Fire, one leads to the Gate of Despair, and the last will bring you straight to my private audience hall, where I shall wait patiently for your arrival. Split up, stay together, choose correctly, or choose poorly--I care not for your decisions from this point forward, for your deaths are ensured regardless." The voice of Andross faded away then, so the pair assumed he was gone--for the time being.
"Well, I can rule out the right-hand passageway," Celestra began confidently, treading a few steps closer to the entrance and pointing at a small black scuff mark on the floor. "I placed that with my boot when we entered, just in case something went wrong; that way leads us back to the entrance."
Fox turned his eyes on the path behind, the path in front, and the path to his left slowly in turn. "Eyes of Fire, Gate of Despair . . . what do you suppose those are?"
The assassin shrugged indifferently. "Probably two odd means of killing intruders." She grinned sardonically and replaced her weapons on her belt. "There's no ingenius way to decide . . . shall we separate, or move on together?"
"I'm all for sticking with you. If the others had made it through the grate we could go in pairs, but I'd rather fight Andross with you and not alone."
"Agreed." Celestra had already decided that coming against the Tyrant of Lylat single-handedly did not sound desirable at all. She, too, set to weighing their options; heaving a great sigh she extricated two matching coins from the Katinan currency system from a pouch on her vest and handed one to Fox. "Alright; we'll flip for it."
Fox ogled at her. "You want to flip for this?! Are you mental?!"
Celestra chose not to answer that, asking instead, "You got a better idea? Look--one head, one tail, and we'll go left; two heads we go forward, and two tails we go back."
The mercenary leader counted off three on his fingers, and they tossed the coins; Celestra's came up tails, and so did Fox's. "Right," she continued, pocketing the coins again and turning around. "Back it is."
"I can't believe we just flipped coins to decide which direction to go in a Venomian maze created by Andross."
"Can it, Fox."
Captain Anilora was rudely awakened by a slap in the face and a rough tug or two on his manacles. A pair of Venomians were very nervously unclasping his crude bindings from the chains that kept him anchored to the wall; Rhazed was hurrying them along with violent shouts in some foreign language the Katinan didn't know. Apparently Rhazed's abnormal speech was merely a by-product of his fear, for a moment later he was speaking English again.
"Hurry it along, lads! No time to waste! This is the last envoy to make it through the barrier before we turn up the juice! MOVE IT!"
With a shove Anilora was out the door, marched at a grueling pace down the hallway and toward a remote docking bay on the northern side of Area 6. He managed to catch snippets of rapid conversation and discerned a few things: General Pepper's fleet had indeed succeeded in traveling through hyperspace, and their reinforcements had bolstered the weakening triad when all hope seemed lost. 'Some crazy old white fox' was clearly in command of the triad in Anilora's absence, and he knew that could only be Sensenic Morray. Most disturbing of all the captain learned Celestra and the Star Fox mercenaries were exempt from the siege entirely.
The northern docking bay led the small, insignificant cruiser out of the battle unnoticed, for the battle was taking place on the south side of the defense station and so no pilot flew elsewhere. Anilora was discarded in a slightly larger prison cell and forgotten, but his cell commanded a single small window through which he could clearly see Venom, growing larger with every passing moment.
Two hours before reaching their destination Rhazed came into the cell, crossing his arms smugly over his well-muscled torso and rattling off protocol to the Katinan captain, who was only half-listening. When the burly elk-Venomian grew tired of his prisoners' lack of attentiveness he abruptly seized the much smaller man and pinned him against the wall, feet dangling many inches off the floor. "Now you listen here, you little runt! You might be thinkin' you're all high and mighty now, but your attitude better change before we make it to Andross's place! If I have to break you in half, I will, you understand me?!"
The bruise coming to a head on the Katinan's chin throbbed violently, but he narrowed his violet eyes and answered evenly, "I have been put through far too much of late to be hanging here bandying words with you, Rhazed. Better folk than me are out there tonight suffering far worse fates, and so I will not worry for my own. Your threats fall upon deaf ears, and if I must die this very night at the hands of Andross, I shall. Now release me--I must prepare a speech for your superior with the proper amount of loathing in it, and you will only distract me."
Rhazed did not appreciate Anilora's dry humor at all; quite the contrary he re-doubled his efforts on the captain's jaw before again leaving him in a dazed heap. When he was certain his captor was gone Anilora dragged himself to the window and clung to it weakly as long as he could.
"Where are you, Celestra?" he murmured sadly. "Although you are greatly needed elsewhere, I cannot help but wish you were here."
Navigating even one branch of the maze proved to be slow and trying work; Andross had obviously placed great emphasis on the construction of Venom's City Proper over the many years of his tyrannical rule. The Maze of Indecision was immense, complete with walls that were impossible to blast through with their weapons (because of course that was the first thing they tried) and a limitless ceiling their eyes could not glimpse. In addition the lighting was rather poor, nearly dark save the occasional torch in a sconce protruding from a wall. Celestra led the way, plasma lasers in hand, gracefully sidestepping each corner and always advancing weapons first. Fox came along two steps behind, eyes darting vigilantly every which way, the plasma rifle buzzing easily with barely contained energy in his hands. Twenty minutes or more they slowly but steadily pressed forward, until Celestra halted suddenly and motioned for the mercenary to pause.
"There's something up ahead," she muttered in a low voice, and although it had been a difficult night for her Fox took note of the determined glint that flashed briefly in her eyes. With a nod of her head, Celestra led them forward.
The maze widened out into a dim cavern, also with an unfathomable ceiling lit only by two braziers burning blue fire. Celestra squinted into the gloom, trying to sort through the myriad of mundane fog and shadows, and then the firelight fell gently upon the smooth, glassy surface of--
"A mirror?" asked Fox incredulously, and the pair subconsciously lowered their weapons.
Celestra advanced another step, sharing the vulpine's initial reasoning, but at second glance she wasn't so sure. It was a mirror, true enough, sitting on great clawed feet of white ivory and taller than they were, but the assassin stood not six feet from the oval-shaped reflective glass and could not see herself in it; only a milky-white fog swirled lazily in its depths. Strange Venomian runes were scrawled deeply into the rim crowning the mirror; Celestra, who commanded a strong grasp of many Lylatian languages, hadn't a clue what the thin sketches meant.
Somewhere within the smoky haze a light flickered, a lone star in a blanket of black; Celestra focused on it, and all at once the fog lifted.
Dim images flitted across the glass like snippets from a movie, and Celestra gazed back blearily, eyes glossy, seemingly warm and vaguely content. Her body felt weightless, sluggish, as if she had just sank into a pleasantly hot bath. The fragments formed coherent pictures then, embodying her darkest and most private fears.
Captain Anilora was sprawled stomach-first on a polished black-marble floor, soaked in a dark red-black of fading vitality; a cry of agony escaped him before he was smote to death by some unseen force. The picture contorted into Bill, his body in a limp heap at Leon Powalski's feet; she was bound upon the Altar of Fallen Star, and the mercenaries she so trusted had turned their backs on her torment and started away into the mist. And there was Reivin Frost, teasing her with those cruel knives, savoring her every whimper as she begged him to ease her passing.
Some incomprehensible voice in her mind wheedled that something was amiss, but the comfortable vessel that was her lame body refused to react. She was trapped inside her traitorous body, screaming to be released, condemned to view the video that was her most secret horror realized. Twin shadowy tendrils wafted from the mirror's surface, morphing into translucent hands that grasped her head forcefully and drew her forward.
All was so peaceful and nondescript, though, and Celestra didn't even want to move.
The images shifted and became more corporeal; Slippy was kneeling on the floor, cradling Keil Ford in his arms, damp with the coyote's blood; Erik Nioxin was screaming and bawling into Sensenic Morray's chest, and this contorted into the image of William's Arwing exploding into fragments. Then there was Anilora, clutching his chest and laboring for breath at the feet of a brutish elk Venomian; tears were streaming down her cheeks, but no emotion showed on her face for she was rendered immobile.
Those shimmering see-through hands were glowing, promising sleep unhindered, and they began to steal her life energy away.
Behind and slightly to the right of Celestra, Fox was not in full scope of the mirror, thus was beyond its enigmatic tricks. He asked several nonchalant questions before he really understood that the assassin wasn't just ignoring him--she couldn't hear him at all. Gently the mercenary leader called out to her, reaching out to place a trembling hand on her shoulder.
Celestra turned to face him, eyes glittering a penetrating laser-red. Her switchblades came up into her hands, and with a snarl she plunged one of them into the meat of Fox's forearm. Howling in pain and surprise Fox wrenched free, drawing a long adamantite-encrusted knife from his belt and raising it in a defensive posture in front of him.
"What are you doing?!" he shrieked at her. "It's me, Fox! You know me!"
The assassin's face was as cold as a block of stone; with a predatory air she advanced steadily, and the vulpine knew he was in trouble. Clearly Celestra wasn't in her right frame of mind, and seemed very likely to attack again; Fox also knew that, should the encounter come to blows, he did not stand a chance. She came at him in a swift array of thrusting motions, all of which he sidestepped with barely a thought. It was a fighting style completely bereft of her natural prowess with blades; it was forced and straight-forward where normally it was fluid and graceful. Fox ducked under a sweeping motion meant to cleave his skull in two, then came to the conclusion that this was not Celestra at all.
"Don't you remember me?" he asked hurriedly, dancing about doggedly. "I'm a mercenary! I lead Star Fox! You know everyone--Falco, Slippy, Peppy--"
Still Celestra came on, cutting madly at the air, an action that seemed more automatic than planned.
"--Morray! And Bill!" A flicker of the dimmest recognition shimmered in her eyes briefly; the assassin growled and continued to work her blades, but she was no longer pressing so hard. "Anilora! You remember him, don't you Celest? Anilora cares about you--he wouldn't want you to do this!"
The knives fell from her hands to clatter to the floor, but her fists were clenching at empty air as though searching for some other weapon. Fox sheathed his knife. "Don't leave me now, Celestra--we've got to take care of Andross first. Come back!"
With a violent shudder the red spark left the icy depths of her eyes; the shadowy hands released Celestra, and she swooned. Fox caught her and pulled her in tightly to his chest, pinning her arms to her sides to keep her from lashing out again. She shuddered involuntarily; Fox whispered, "Shh . . . it's over now."
"Well done, both of you." Celestra and Fox turned their eyes upward, but once again it was merely Andross's voice. "You have just defeated the traitorous wiles of the Gate of Despair. Only one other before you did so without losing his life--I am, of course, referring to James McCloud."
"Shut up!" shouted Fox, helping Celestra to right herself.
"My ingenious gate does two things--it shows a number of falsified images that mirror one's secret fears, and it can also give glimpses of very real tragedies." A string of booming laughter echoed, so loud the dust under their feet rose in clouds. "What was fake--and what was real?"
"Prepare well, Andross!" Celestra cried, head thrown back as she barked angrily at the sky, slender body shaking with fury. "Prepare well--I'm coming for YOU!"
Falco proudly swerved into the point of the loose triangle formation, leading his fellow mercenaries back toward the distant melee taking place at Area 6. Logic told him that Celestra and Fox would be fine without them--he had seen how self-sufficient and capable they could be on numerous occasions--but the fear remained in a dark corner of his heart. It was time for the end game; they were no longer considering necessary steps to take, for they had just taken their last. His two dear friends were in, were there, and had nowhere else to go but to Andross.
For a moment the thought churned his stomach, but the sensation passed momentarily. Shaking his head he compelled himself to say something witty and sarcastic, his customary response to uncomfortable situations. "You know what's not fair? Celestra and Fox are going to be the heroes when they kill Andross, and what do we get out of this? We're just three more guys in the fray!"
Neither of his comrades answered outright; Peppy forced a half-hearted chuckle, and Slippy issued a sigh. The avian fell silent.
Not ten minutes later Falco's G-Diffuser started blinking the 'incoming transmission' signal, and Falco connected to it without any real interest. Lack of action fatigued him, and he was now looking forward to reaching the battlefield. Bill's voice flooded his cockpit, harsh and demanding all at once.
"Falco, listen, I've got a job for ya."
"Nice try, Bill, but you know we only listen to Pepper--"
"Forget Pepper," Bill interrupted snappishly. "You're gonna listen to me now. Have you seen any small, single Venomian envoys headed away from the fight?"
"No." Falco's brows drew together in a frown. "Why?"
"One of them's headin' right in your direction, and Cap'n Anilora's on board! Don't fire on any enemy craft you may come across, got it?!"
"Whoa, wait just a second! How did those sleazy Venomians get ahold of Anilora?!" In their respective Arwings Slippy and Peppy perked up in alarm at this news.
"That doesn't matter, Falco, just get him back unharmed!" With that Bill promptly terminated the communications link connecting them. Falco turned to his wingmates.
"Well, you heard Bill. Pepper's specific instructions were to aid the fleet in the best way possible, and I'm thinking that this qualifies as important. So let's go find Anilora!" Boosting his engines the avian spurred them into greater speed and led them off, urgently now in the face of their vital task.
Every so often Anilora could hear footsteps in the hall outside and he would drop the chains connecting his manacles to the wall as a precautionary measure; after Rhazed's brutality for his smart remarks, who knew how his captors would respond to an escape attempt? The captain could say one good thing for the Venomians, though: they lacked the finesse of talented strategists, and he supposed that would work in his favor. Rhazed had confiscated his favorite blaster, true enough, but sometimes a more subtle approach served just as well.
Ten minutes after being discarded in his dirty cell Anilora had risked unearthing a tiny switchblade from the padding inside his boot; for the past quarter of an hour he had been fiddling with the weapon in the locks of his bonds, pausing every so often to ensure no real threat loomed outside his cell door. Only echoing footsteps could be heard now, and neither Rhazed nor any other Venomian had shown their face in quite some time. Was he foolish to hope they had forgotten about him?
That was irrelevant; if a dozen security cameras were filming his every move he still had to try! Every minute he struggled brought Venom into a closer perspective, and Anilora had never wanted to be even this close! He was certain Andross was eagerly awaiting his arrival by now; there would be no more delays. It was time to make a run for it, no matter the outcome.
'How many dozens of heroic deeds have my closest friends performed, risking their own lives with barely a thought?' Anilora wondered to himself. 'It is my turn to defy what is logical. Let them punish me! I will not place my friends in further danger.'
Voices floated up from the other side of the door; uttering a curse Anilora again released the chains and hid the switchblade, listening with bated breath. Gradually the voices faded away down the hall, and the Katinan captain continued his work.
By now his wrists were both chafed raw, but it hardly mattered; he was en route to Venom, and Andross would surely kill him. A slight pang of desperation took him at the thought and he jammed the tiny blade as far into the lock as it would go. An explosion of pain shot through his wrist; blood dripped down his arm, but the tumblar slid aside and his left manacle fell to the stone floor with a dull clatter.
A hush came down in the hallway beyond, and Anilora moved in a rush as footsteps audibly neared.
The cell door creaked open in protest, and a bat-winged, bug-faced Venomian peered inside. The human lay unconscious on the floor, still securely bound as he had been upon entrance. Rhazed's instructions were to guard the door and to keep the human shackled up at all times; with a shrug the sentry backed out of the cell, slamming the door behind him.
Anilora sat up again and shook off one of his manacles, which he had cleverly replaced but not latched shut. Next he set to work on his right bond; after a few more minutes of struggle he rose, free of physical confinement, and glared at the door barring any further passage. He knew there was some manner of deadbolt keeping him from moving much further, but he had a risky plan that may award him with some blind luck. Taking up the chains he planted his feet and whipped the coiled metal at the walls and floor, causing such a tumult that the whole ship could hear him! Presently a shout was heard and a hurried footsteps cadence approached; just before the door opened he tossed the chains aside, took up his small knife, and tucked the blade up against the inside of his wrist, concealing it from view.
The cell door banged back off its hinges and the ugly buglike Venomian poked his face inside, wearing an expression of deep irritation. In his hands he clasped a long coil of wickedly-sharp barbed wire that had a rusty appearance, and Anilora flinched at the sight of it. The mere fact that his enemy carried a weapon at all complicated things a bit; the Katinan would have to pray he proved the quicker.
"What the devil do you think you're doing in here?!" snapped his captor, tone of voice promising agony if he gave a wrong answer.
"I beg pardon for disturbing you," Anilora began, voice as calm and even as he could make it. "Somehow I seem to have escaped from my bonds; I was wondering if perhaps you could help me equip them?"
The Venomian had advanced two steps before realization dawned on him; Anilora let fly his only weapon, not with any skill but from sheer panic. Luck was with him, though, for the blade caught his adversary in the jugular and he crumpled to the ground with barely a sound. Anilora darted forward and intercepted the door before it shut again.
Cautiously he peered down the hall; since the raging chains had ceased, there wasn't a soul in sight. For a moment he even considered towing the barbed wire with him as an additional weapon, but deemed it too loud and detrimental to his progress. Quietly Anilora retrieved his switchblade and slipped into the vacant corridor beyond, darting off in a direction he hoped would lead him to the docking bay.
The battered Katinan captain's escape was stealthy and swift, made simpler from observing Celestra at work on numerous occasions. He clung to shadows for cover as he thought the assassin herself might until he arrived at an important-looking door and pulled it open, daring to believe he had been successful.
The door opened into the central control room, which was swarming with Venomians.
Anilora started backing out as silently as possible, but he bumped into someone coming in from behind; he turned, and there loomed Rhazed, brandishing the length of barbed wire he had left behind. With nowhere to go, he raised his knife and prepared for battle.
"You're a clever little rat, bustin' outta that cell and makin' it this far," Rhazed complimented gruffly, advancing slowly and menacingly into the control room. "But the jailbreak ends here, I'm afraid, so come along nicely and you won't lose any teeth."
"Never," Anilora gritted fiercely, and he took a trial swipe at the elk-Venomian to measure his reflexes. "At any rate, you won't take me alive. If you think Andross will be pleased when you deliver him my lifeless body, then let it be so."
Rhazed tipped the strike away with the back of his hand; the blade ripped through the flesh, but he never even flinched. Anilora cried out a dove into a closer range, attacking with desperate abandon. He didn't care that his adversary was twice his size, or that he was already exhausted, or that his hope had nearly run out; he did know Andross's knack for manipulation, however, and refused no matter what to place his friends' lives in peril.
Anilora was clumsy with hand-to-hand combat, more suited to laser technology and the like; Rhazed lightly sidestepped the stroke and met Anilora's abdomen with a devastating knee-thrust. The Katinan's knife left his grasp as he covered himself with his arms, mouth agape in a silent scream; his knees buckled, and he collapsed to the floor.
Rhazed lifted the barbed wire in satisfaction.
"How about a rousing game of paper, rock, scissors?"
Celestra slumped to the ground with a weak laugh, covering her face with her hands. "And you objected to my flipping coins idea?" she muttered through her fingers.
Fox heaved a sigh and slouched to the floor beside the assassin. "No. I'm just trying to broaden our horizons. Next time we can play bubblegum or something."
"Hilarious." Celestra turned her dark gaze to the sky, brooding silently before adding, "I don't think there will be a next time, Fox."
"I know."
"Any regrets?"
"Just one; I never got to tell the guys how proud I am of them." Fox smiled with nostalgia and looked over at his only companion. "What about you?"
"Also just one." Celestra climbed back to her feet, eyes gazing at the ominously dark corridor looming before them. "I never got to tell Gilraen that I love him."
No more words were spoken; together Celestra and Fox set off ahead into the gloom that awaited them, fully prepared and expecting the very worst.
Subconsciously the assassin and mercenary felt the close hall widen on both sides; Celestra pressed her hand to Fox's forearm, wordlessly warning him to be on his guard. They drew closer to one another, weapons unsteady in nervous hands, hearts pounding anxiously in their chests. Beneath their feet the stone floor became padded and pleasantly plush to walk upon, like some pampered carpet or a rug.
Still they advanced, far too terrified to continue but even more frantic at the thought of going back.
With a dramatic puff of air blue sparks of flame flared to life within wall sconces, bringing a large, octagonal-shaped room into sharper focus; the carpet of black velvet beneath their feet ended abruptly a few feet away at the foot of a coldly elegant throne of purest onyx. For only a moment a pair of malevolent red eyes gleamed like twin lasers from the shadows not so far away, and the two were lifted from their feet and guided forward by a commanding unseen force.
Stopping abruptly in midair they came face-to-face with the greatest enemy of all the free peoples of Lylat, and he glared back at the intruders in all his horrible splendor. The force suspending them was too powerful to defeat, but they were just as soon deposited upon the floor at his feet, surrounded by maniacal laughter and staring into the face of their worst fear realized.
Here they stood at last, finally in the presence of Andross, the Tyrant of Lylat.