FINAL FANTASY: POINT OF INTERSECTION
Book 1: The Approaching Storm

18

With a bestial roar that made Squall's eardrums vibrate almost painfully, the rex charged madly across the muddy ground, clawed feet tearing up great clots of earth and vegetation. The huge creature's jaws gaped open with knifelike teeth at least a dozen centimeters long, and beady golden eyes bespoke the thing's primal hunger. Mottled, reddish-black scales armored the rex's body, and its thrashing tail swung menacingly behind it, smashing easily through the trunks of a few nearby trees as it passed.

Although a T-Rexaur was certainly a fearsome sight, neither was it one Squall was unfamiliar with, especially here in the Garden's own training center. Hyne only knew how many times he and his friends had run into them during the war, especially after the Lunar Cry, and Garden staff always bred a small population of the beasts for the students and faculty to practice their fighting skills against.

The ground trembling beneath him under the thunderous impacts of the rex's racing strides, Squall eyed the approaching monster calmly even as it bore down on him. He could feel the creature's fetid breath as it swiftly closed the distance, and his fingers tightened reflexively around the Lionheart's hilt in anticipation. Adrenaline surged fiercely through Squall's body as the rex loomed over him, abruptly blocking out the light and snapping its jaws in a brutal downward thrust.

Reacting purely on instinct, Squall dove to the left, narrowly missing a crushing bite that would have snapped him in two like a dry twig, and spun back to his right, skillfully bringing up his gunblade in a vicious curving slash across the back of the monster's knee. Great gouts of dark blood spurted from the severed tendons, and the rex bellowed deafeningly in rage and pain as it struggled to find Squall, who was already fast at work on the other leg.

A few deft cuts later, the massive beast collapsed heavily to the ground, smashing through trees and underbrush as it did so. The rex lay on its side, groaning madly and scrabbling at the air with its stubby forelegs as Squall slowly approached, his bloodsoaked gunblade clutched firmly in his gloved hands. He'd already dispatched a few grats before the rex had come thundering into view, but the prospect of a tougher opponent hadn't ruffled him. In fact, he enjoyed it.

The rex's tail whipped out at him unexpectedly, and Squall had to dive to the side to avoid it. Rolling to his feet, he charged straight at the creature's head and brought his gunblade up to strike. Powerful jaws snapped threateningly as the rex sought to defend itself, but Squall dodged instinctively, his feet almost dancing with the motion of his evasive maneuvers.

With a single, powerful thrust, Squall jammed his weapon deep into the monster's eye.

The massive beast shuddered, let out one last agonized roar as the blue-edged Lionheart popped straight through its eyeball and into its brain, and at last lay still. Dust hung lazily in the air as Squall grasped the embedded gunblade firmly with both hands and pulled, but to no effect. In the end, he had to set a booted foot securely against the side of the rex's lower jaw before he could get enough leverage to wrench the weapon free of the dead thing's corpse.

"Not bad," came a familiar voice from behind him. One that Squall had been expecting, actually, although that didn't mean he wanted to hear it, because he didn't. He knew well enough who had come, and why. It wasn't as though what the man had to say was any surprise, really, because Squall could probably come to the conclusion himself. He wasn't about to accept the implications, however.

Wiping his gunblade first against the scaly hide of the creature he had just slain, Squall glanced around for something that might help get as much of the rest of the gunk off as he could. He'd finish up later, but for now there was only so much of the stuff that he could remove. Grabbing a handful of large, fanlike leaves from the plants growing nearby, Squall used his makeshift rags to scrub the better portion of the blood and tissue from his weapon. He grimaced at his handiwork, not caring for the few stains left behind that could only be polished out later, but at the moment, it would have to suffice.

Finally he turned to the man who had spoken. "What do you want, Laguna?"

"Well, you've probably already heard," the older man replied, "but I wanted to tell you myself. After all, it's sort of a family matter, you understand."

Squall narrowed his pale blue eyes dangerously. "Family? Since when were we ever a family?"

You may be my father, Laguna, but it doesn't make you family. Sis was my family. She and Matron and the rest were my family. You were never there.

He'd heard, of course. That was part of the reason he'd come down here, after all, to vent his frustrations against the mindless beasts that roamed around in this place. Working out, honing his fighting skills, those things always made him feel a little better. Squall's grip on his gunblade didn't loosen as he glared icily at Laguna's somber expression.

His mane of dark hair streaked with a bit more gray than Squall remembered, Laguna sighed heavily. "Squall, this hurts for me as much as for you, but you know I couldn't keep the search teams going forever. Esthar's resources are stretched enough lately as it is."

"How can you just give up on her like that?" Squall retorted angrily. "You, of all people!"

"I love Ellone like she was my own daughter, Squall. You know that probably better than anyone. But at the same time, I can't turn my back on my responsibilities, either. I'd have thought, as the SeeD commander, you'd have understood that."

Squall could feel his blood beginning to boil now. "What about your responsibility to your family? Or have you just abandoned her like you did me?"

"You sure don't pull your punches," Laguna grimaced. "I haven't abandoned her, Squall. You know I'd never do that. Not if there was still hope left."

"Then why'd you call off the search teams?" Squall shot back, his voice steadily beginning to rise. He wasn't quite sure how much more of this he could stand.

The sad, almost broken expression on his father's face only seemed to make Squall angrier. "There wasn't any further reason to keep them out there. We've scoured nearly every square inch of that region down to the last snowflake without finding anything. She's gone, Squall."

"No!" Squall spat furiously. He wouldn't accept it. He couldn't. Squall wasn't about to allow his Sis to be taken from him a second time. "I won't believe it, Laguna. Not until I see her body for myself. She's out there somewhere, damn it! She has to be!"

Laguna gazed sympathetically at him. "Believe me, Squall, I want her back as much as you do, but there's just nothing more we can do now."

"Bullshit!" Squall snarled, suddenly grabbing the other man by the front of his shirt and slamming him against a nearby tree. "She's out there somewhere, and I'm going to find her!"

Although he was as surprised as Laguna at what he had just done, Squall didn't let it show. Instead he scowled angrily at the man that had always been more Ellone's father than his. How could Laguna do this to her? What the hell was he thinking? After having saved her from Dr. Odine and Sorceress Adel when she was just a girl, how could Laguna turn his back on her now?

Slowly releasing his grip on the other man, Squall fumed inwardly, frustrated by his inability to get away from the Garden long enough to find out what had really happened to Ellone. For the past several weeks, he'd been occupied with investigating the Dollet disaster, not to mention recuperating from that nasty wound he'd gotten from one of those strange creatures in the tower.

Although it still ached a bit, his arm was more or less whole now. Dr. Kadowaki had confined him to the infirmary for an entire week upon his initial return to the Garden, and so he'd been unable to preside over the memorial service for the fallen SeeD members and candidates from the ill-fated exam team. The chill in his arm had grown worse, and by the third day he had been slipping in and out of consciousness.

It was only when Matron herself came and spoke to him, her words soft and soothing, that the cold within him had finally begun to relent. Squall remembered lying on the infirmary bed, half-awake in a sort of dreamy haze and dimly aware of her sitting quietly at his side. She had run her delicate fingers along the length of his wounded arm and across his oddly sweaty forehead, murmuring something he could not quite make out. Edea had stayed with him for hours, he remembered now, until the numbness was gone and he had at last fully awoken to find her still there.

Nearly two more weeks had passed since then, and still he was no closer to finding Ellone and Rinoa. No clues had been found concerning his sister's fate, and the Galbadians had yet to speak of the prisoner that Squall knew without any doubt that they had. If it hadn't been for that blasted arm wound, he would have taken the Ragnarok to Galbadia himself and scoured every inch of the damned place until he found her. And then he would have flown to Trabia and found Ellone.

So much time had been wasted already. Squall wasn't sure how much those two women had left, and it was that realization more than anything else that drove him here to the training center on an almost daily basis. For a little while, at least, he could forget about his worries and just let his gunblade dish out his frustrations upon the monsters here. In a way, it was actually quite soothing. Only now, his quiet haven had been irrevocably disturbed.

Squall narrowed his eyes angrily, his voice soft but full of steel as he addressed his father. "Just get the hell out of my sight, Laguna. I've had enough of this."

Without another word or even a backward glance, Squall stalked away deeper into the contained wilderness of the training facility. If he was lucky, a few grats would show themselves long enough for him to cut them down. Somehow, talking with Laguna always made Squall want to lash out at something. He gripped the hilt of his weapon tightly, eyes darting warily back and forth as they carefully scanned the trees and undergrowth, and tried to ignore the rage coiling like fire within his gut.


The darkness, as always, was everywhere.

Rinoa lay curled in a fetal position in the far corner of her small, lightless prison, her naked body trembling uncontrollably. Whether from fear or cold or perhaps both, she couldn't quite say. Perhaps it didn't really matter, not anymore. The tattered remnants of her clothing, now little more than ragged scraps of damp fabric, lay haphazardly here and there upon the stone floor, but Rinoa could not have put them back on even had she the strength left to do so. There wasn't much left to wear, truth to tell.

Those men, those animals, had seen to that.

She hadn't seen them since they had finished with her some time ago. They had beaten her, cut her, violated her, and then left her huddled in a trembling heap on the cold stone floor. How long ago that had been, Rinoa couldn't say. Time seemed to have no meaning here. It could have been an hour ago, a week ago, or even a month ago. Nothing ever changed in this dark place.

Her captor had not shown himself either since then, and Rinoa wasn't quite sure whether to be glad or uneasy about that. She shivered with the memory of his odd, reddish-pink albino eyes upon her, the cold, measured whisper of his voice in her ear. Ghalein would come back for her eventually, she knew.

He had spoken of her impending execution at the behest of the Galbadian president, Josef Deling. Yet that didn't make any sense. She had met the man once or twice during official visits to negotiate peace talks with the new Galbadian provisional government that SeeD had helped install. Josef Deling, unlike his late elder brother Vinzer, had been eager to forge ties with Garden and SeeD and had even contributed funding for repairs to the damaged Galbadia Garden.

Had he really changed so much in just a single short year? Or, as it seemed more likely now, had he simply been duping her and everyone else all along?

A subtle shift in the air brought Rinoa abruptly out of her thoughts, and she looked up to see the cloaked form of her captor emerge silently from the darkness, his colorless skin seeming almost waxen and dead in the gloom, like that of a corpse that hadn't yet begun to truly decay. Rinoa curled tighter about herself, trying to salvage what little modesty remained to her, although she knew he had likely watched those men rape her and had already seen all that there was to see.

"We meet again, little sorceress," he whispered, his eyes glittering coldly.

Rinoa glanced apprehensively at him. "What do you want?"

In response, Ghalein knelt until his face hovered only a few inches from hers. "You, of course. Why else would I have gone to such trouble to bring you here?"

"But why me?" she wondered, wanting to shrink back from him but strangely unable to do so. "Why did you have to let those… those men… why…?"

"You need fear them no longer, little sorceress, if that is your concern," her captor replied, his voice cold and quiet. "They have served their purpose."

Though relieved that those horrible men would trouble her no more, Rinoa shuddered nevertheless. What purpose could there have been in her violation other than her captor's twisted pleasure? Her virginity had already been given to Squall, her husband, when they married, but that didn't make the pain of what she had gone through in this hellish place any less.

Thinking of Squall, Rinoa sighed longingly. She just wanted to be home with him and with her dog, and if she hadn't been so stubborn about becoming a SeeD, she might still be there. Would she ever see him again? Before the rape, she had still held out hope of escape, but now…

Now it was all she could do to keep from giving in entirely.

"Where… where are they…?" Something about the way Ghalein had spoken froze Rinoa's blood within her veins, and a dark premonition hovered inside her as she met his gaze.

His eyes narrowed slightly, his tone chillingly matter-of-fact. "Those men are dead, little sorceress. They were of no further use to me, so when they came to me for their 'payment', I disposed of them. One by one, slowly… and painfully. Very painfully. Does that satisfy you?"

As much as she hated to admit it, Rinoa nodded slowly. Not that she would ever wish on anyone the fate of those men, but if there was anyone at all who deserved it, then in her mind it most certainly was those animals that had so terribly abused her. She knew Squall would probably agree with that sentiment, but it still didn't help her feel any better.

"Why are you doing this?" Rinoa murmured weakly.

Ghalein paused for a moment, then rose back to his full height. As much as she feared him, Rinoa couldn't help but wonder who he was and where he had come from. Something about him drew her, fascinated her as surely as flame attracts a moth, although she didn't know quite what. She remembered the soft, cold caress of his fingers against her skin and how her blood had seemed to flare with heat at his touch. Rinoa shivered involuntarily, disgusted both at her reaction to him and at herself in general.

Folding his arms over his chest, Ghalein peered thoughtfully down at her, and he responded with a question of his own. "How old would you say that I am?"

Rinoa sat up, her back against the damp stone of the sewer wall, crossing her arms over her breasts and drawing her legs up against her abdomen, and gazed up at her captor. Despite his bald scalp and pale skin, she realized that he didn't actually appear to be all that old. His chalky white skin bore no lines or wrinkles, and he held himself without stooping or leaning, his posture and bearing more that of a man in his prime rather than one in his elder years. Yet his strange, reddish-pink eyes bore an odd, ageless intensity within them that spoke more of centuries than of years.

"I… I don't know," Rinoa answered hesitantly. "Thirty-five, maybe? Thirty-eight?"

Ghalein chuckled humorlessly. "An understandable guess. Understandable, but still wrong. I have walked this Planet for over five thousand years, little sorceress."

Her eyes widening, Rinoa stared incredulously at him. "But… but that's impossible!"

"If I were human, you would be correct," Ghalein whispered, his expression growing serious again. "However, I am not. Those who were once my people died out long ago. Ironic, don't you think, that an outcast has survived when those who shut him out have not?"

Rinoa frowned in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"

"What better way to cause pain to those who have inflicted it upon you than to turn it upon that which they hold most dear?" Ghalein answered. "The dark Master whom I serve has granted me many things, among them a greatly extended lifespan. I am not immortal, as it might appear, but rather I age quite slowly, perhaps a day for every century that passes."

Although it seemed almost too preposterous to believe, Rinoa knew her captor spoke the truth. It made an odd sort of sense in a way, although it frightened her what a person who had lived so long with such deep hatred held inside him might be capable of. Ghalein seemed to her both patient and cunning, an incredibly dangerous combination indeed.

"So… what happens now?" Rinoa asked, unsure if she really wanted to know the answer.

"As you are no doubt aware," her captor explained, "you are to be publicly executed for crimes against the Galbadian empire. That is the will of Josef Deling."

Tilting her chin up high, Rinoa mustered as much defiance as she could. "My friends will come for me. They won't let that happen!"

Ghalein leaned close, his colorless lips curling upward into a sneer. "Exactly, little sorceress. I am counting on that. The best puppets are those who are not even aware that they are being used."

"W-what?" she stammered, eyes widening.

"They will come, and they will save you," Ghalein went on, each whispered word like a dagger of ice piercing Rinoa's spine. "Or at least, they will believe it is you."

Straightening once more, the cloaked figure of her captor glanced to his right, and for the first time, Rinoa realized that he wasn't alone. Something stood near him, so cloaked in shadow that she couldn't make out what it was, but it seemed humanoid, at least.

The creature shuffled forward, and Rinoa began to understand why she hadn't been able to see it before. Its skin was utterly black, and its limbs long and thin, with spindly, sticklike fingers and toes. Its hairless frame gaunt and thin, the thing seemed more shadow than flesh. Yet it was the creature's face that sent shudders coursing down Rinoa's spine.

Or rather, its lack of a face.

Rinoa fought to keep from trembling as the thing leaned close, its head as smooth and featureless as an egg as it pressed lightly against the side of her neck as though sniffing for something. Cold, clammy hands grasped her arms and legs, forcing them apart with surprising strength, and its long, twiglike fingers began to softly trace the contours of her body. Rinoa shivered, too frightened to move, as the thing seemed to learn and memorize every aspect of her physical form.

"This," Ghalein explained, "is a flesh crafter, one of my more useful creations. Adesté is what you might call a demon, although few such beings possess her, shall we say, talents."

Stinging bolts of pain suddenly shot through Rinoa's body, and she stiffened as the creature's fingers began to dig into the flesh of her abdomen. The demon, as Ghalein had called it, brought its other hand up to the left side of Rinoa's face, the tips of its fingers splayed out across her cheek and temple. Rinoa struggled to free herself, even to move, but the strength seemed to have been drained from her body. She screamed in pain and terror as the demon's fingers began to burrow beneath her skull.

Rinoa felt her eyes roll upward in their sockets as the creature's probing appendages reached her brain. She wanted to die, hoped she would die, but somehow she did not. It was as though, in spite of their presence, Adesté's fingers did no harm to her body.

Her thoughts grew muddled and indistinct, running together without any coherent meaning. Memories arose in her mind, one after the other in an endless, rapid-fire stream of color and motion. She saw herself, garbed in a SeeD cadet's uniform while on that ill-fated mission to Dollet. Her wedding day, a year before, and her disappointment that her father had refused to come. The final battle with Ultimecia, and the feeling of the future sorceress within her own body aboard the Esthar space station.

She saw the dance where she first met Squall. They roamed across the room, clumsy at first but with growing confidence as she kept prodding him. The summer before, while in the midst of her fling with Seifer. They were fishing together in Balamb, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the edge of the docks as the afternoon sun lit the surface of the water like a thousand mirrors. She hadn't cared much for the sport, nor had she been very good at it. But at the time, she had simply enjoyed being with him.

Further back now, Rinoa watched herself run away from home yet again. Only this time, she had sworn never to come back. It had been shortly after that incident that she had journeyed to Timber and founded the Forest Owls with her friends Zone and Watts. The memories kept coming, faster now, as though the demon were absorbing all that she knew, all that she was.

She saw herself, a little girl of five years, crying alone in her room the night her mother had died. Her father had never come in, never even tried to comfort her. Rinoa had always hated him for that, for his insensitivity. A haze of forgotten memories, images of her mother and father in better days, and finally Rinoa found herself seeing her own birth one rainy night in one of those sterile Galbadian hospital rooms. Her infant self had screamed again and again at the strange, cold world she had been suddenly thrust into, until her mother's whispered words of comfort had finally calmed her.

Rinoa screamed, tears leaking from her eyes as the demon wrenched her very identity from her, every thought and memory, even as it drained blood and fluid from her body. Fog swirled through her mind, blotting out the images of the life that was being stolen from her until nothing remained but darkness. She hung in a place of emptiness, her screams slowly fading to little more than frightened whimpers as the probing fingers of her tormentor at last withdrew.

Sagging weakly back against the wall, Rinoa saw her surroundings again. She felt the cold, damp stone against her skin, smelled the rank odor of her own sweat, and tasted bile in her throat. Darkness pressed down upon her almost like a physical weight, and Rinoa suddenly found herself gasping for breath. The moment passed soon enough, however, but she couldn't seem to keep from trembling.

And all the while, Adesté was there, her eyeless gaze cold and indifferent.

For the first time, Rinoa realized that the flesh crafter's black skin had begun to liquefy, glistening like fresh tar. Limbs grew shorter and thicker, more human in proportion. The creature's fingers and toes diminished, clumping into the stubby digits a normal person would have. Adesté's gaunt frame slowly filled out, the gentle swell of her breasts and abdomen clearly indicating a feminine physique.

The creature's head, once smooth and featureless, now began to reform itself, the viscous layers of black semi-liquid skin dripping like hot wax. Adesté tilted her head back as a mouth, nose, and eyes emerged one by one. Locks of dark hair grew from her scalp in a sudden rush as eyebrows and lashes unfurled and her ears bloomed like a pair of twisted flowers.

As the transformation neared its completion, the demon's skin lightened from black to gray, then from gray to pale white. Colors began to emerge then, a series of creamy flesh tones that overlapped each other until finally Adesté seemed to find the one she sought. Her skin then solidified once more as her body at last finished its chilling metamorphosis.

Rinoa stared in horror at a mirror image of herself.

Her own deep brown eyes stared haughtily back at her, the doppelganger's lips turning upward in a sneer. Adesté had duplicated Rinoa in perfect detail, right down to the bruises and cuts those horrible men had inflicted. She too was naked, and Rinoa realized that the flesh crafter would remain here to begin Ghalein's intricate deception of both his supposed leader and of the Garden.

What then, Rinoa wondered, would be her own fate?

Ghalein's whispered voice startled her out her dark thoughts. "Now you begin to understand, little sorceress. Deling is of no further use to me, so what better way to dispose of him than to have my enemies do it for me? Your love will stop at nothing to save you, even if he must slay the leader of the Galbadian nation to do so. But it will be Adesté, not you, that will return with him to Garden."

"Why…?" was all Rinoa could manage. She thought she knew, but she had to be sure.

"To destroy SeeD from within," Ghalein answered, "and to divide the Garden against itself. For in such a state, it cannot focus its attentions elsewhere. There is much we must yet do, and it will be simpler if Garden and SeeD are unable to interfere."

Rinoa blinked in confusion. "We? I don't understand…"

In response, Ghalein extended one pale-skinned hand to her. "You fear your powers, raw and untapped as they are. However, they can be so much more. I can teach you to harness them and make them your own. You will control them, and not they you."

"Why… why would you possibly want… to help me?" Rinoa asked suspiciously. Yet she knew he was right. Ever since becoming a sorceress, she had never felt comfortable with the powers she had gained. Edea had once offered to teach her how to better use them, but Rinoa had been too afraid of her legacy at the time to accept the Matron's offer.

"My reasons are my own," Ghalein replied coldly, "and none of your concern. Your alternative, little sorceress, is to die. Now."

Slumping resignedly against the wall, Rinoa sighed forlornly. Memories swam in her head, but it was as though they belonged to another person. It was a life she held little hope of ever finding again. The hell she had been brutally thrust into, that was her life now. Escape, she knew, was impossible. Her captor was a man over whom the laws of nature seemingly held no sway. What chance did she have against him? None, as it stood now, but maybe…

Rinoa took Ghalein's hand, and he pulled her, not ungently, to her feet. His commanding gaze held her eyes for many long moments, and she had to remember how to breathe. Warmth surged beneath her skin as he ran his fingers lightly across her bare back, smiling faintly as he did so.

"Welcome to the shadows, my little sorceress," Ghalein whispered.