A/N: Omigod, major problem! This was supposed to be the last chapter, but I went onto 5 pages of writing (that's the length this is!) and realized I was no where near finished! You're looking at 2 more chapters, probably!
Disclaimer: It's been a while since this story started, and Square-Enix still haven't called up saying they want me to join them! Oh, poo …
No dedication, remember?
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The End Of It All, Hopefully
I almost landed on Martha when I came to the end of the slide. Luckily, she managed to roll away. The two of us got up sharpish and waited for the others. They arrived shortly afterwards, standing up and blinking from the bright lights of the farplane. Martha, Lillie, Victoria, Holly and I started to walk away from the cliff the slide had taken us to. Everyone else would wait for Nemesis, while the five of us would find a way off the cliff down to the farplane below.
"We can get down this way" Victoria pointed to a part of the cliff that was on a slight tilt, instead of straight down. The cliff face was covered in groves that could easily be used as hand or foot holes. I agreed with her and started to follow her down the extremely high cliff. I looked at to see a not-so-happy Holly and Martha.
"Just think of it as abseiling" I yelled as I descended out of their view and Lillie came down after me.
I heard Holly mutter"In abseiling, they use ropes" before I was too far away to hear them. Half an hour later and I was only a quarter of the way down the cliff (that should give you some idea of how big it was). Victoria was, well, I didn't know how far down she way – I was too scared to look. Lillie was roughly seven metres above me, with Martha close on her tail, and finally Holly was about ten metres higher than Martha.
I lowered my foot down, placing it on a ledge slightly to the left of me. The second the pressure of my foot hit the ledge, it crumbled beneath me, causing me to practically slide a few metres down the cliff face, before I managed to grab and cling onto several groves in the rock.
"Shit" I murmured, daring to look down. The ground seemed miles away, and suddenly everything became dizzy. "Shit, shit, shit" I muttered again, quickly beginning to descend again.
"You okay, Amy" Victoria called from down below me.
I sighed, then shouted back"Yeah. I think."
An hour later, and I was still climbing. I'd not looked down since my accident, and didn't know how far away the ground was from me. Lillie, Martha and Holly were quite a distance further up the rock face then they had been earlier, due to all of us getting tired. I had no idea where Victoria was, and I didn't dare look to find out.
For the hour or so since my accident, the climb had been pretty boring. There was absolutely no suggestions from above that Nemesis had showed up, and we were all beginning to wonder.
Lower foot. Lower hand. Find ledge. Find groove. Place foot. Place hand.
Lower other foot. Lower other hand. Find ledge. Find groove. Place other foot. Place other hand.
And so on, for the past hour.
Lower foot. Lower hand. Find ledge. Find groove. Place foot. Place hand.
Lower other foot. Lower other hand. Find ledge. Find groove. Place other foot. Place other hand.
Lower foot. Lower hand. Find ledge. Find groove. Place foot. Place hand.
Lower other foot. Lower other hand. Find ledge. Find groove. Place other foot. Place other hand.
I lowered my foot, again, and suddenly hit solid ground. The impact and surprise made me lose my balance and topple backwards, into the mass of flowers around me. I lay on my back, not bothering to move, just staring up at the sky of the farplane.
"I see your down" Victoria said from somewhere behind me. I sat up slowly, and looked over my shoulder at her.
"Yeah" I managed to say, shakily standing up. "How long you been down for"
She shrugged. "Five minutes" She stared up at the others, making their way down to us. She pointed at them. "Judging by how far away they are, it's gonna take maybe twenty minutes for Lillie to reach us. And then Martha and Holly are at least another ten minutes behind her."
"What, we just … wait" I asked, flopping down beside a boulder and leaning against it.
Victoria nodded, sitting down. "We just wait."
And we settled down for waiting. We waited while Lillie climbed down. We waited as Lillie reached the ground and came over to us. We waited for Martha. We waited for Holly. Turned out, after half an hour of waiting, there weren't quite on the ground.
"We've wasted too much time. For all we know they could be fighting Nemesis now! We've just been waiting here for ages, and we've still got to go and look for this – this place that we don't even know how to get to" Lillie raged. "I mean, we're meant to 'follow our essence', right? Er, does any one know how"
I didn't even bother to open my eyes, which had managed to close themselves for a doze a while ago. Seriously. I was dozing. The world was going to be destroyed and me and my friends were going to stop it. And I was dozing.
"I think" Victoria said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully"When he, Farra I mean, said to follow our essence, I think he meant for us to just go where we feel we had to go. You know, act upon instinct."
"Sounds like it" Martha said, jumping up after she had slipped and crashed to the ground from the cliff face (luckily, there was only a metre or so room in between her and the ground).
Holly carefully lowered her self onto the ground, nodded her approval. "So, are we going or what"
"Er, we kinda need to decide what way we're going"
"Er, okay, right" I said, looking round for some sort of inspiration. Oddly enough, inspiration was exactly what I got. "That way" I said, pointing slightly to my left.
"Although I'm glad someone has a suggestion, er, why" Lillie asked, staring off into the direction I pointed. Then she noticed exactly what I had. "Oooh! Okay then folks, this way"
The others meekly followed, confused looks covering their faces. Martha spoke up"Is one of you gonna tell us why we're off in this direction"
"Yeah. We're going this way because of that" I said, pointing again to my 'inspiration'. Sure enough, the others finally saw it too – roughly one thousand pyreflies, all travelling in that direction, in one enormous crowd. It seemed to make sense to all of us to follow, so we did.
The direction we headed in actually turned out to be a path, with no turn offs, and not a load of open plains (if that's the right word). The path generally followed to edge of the cliff we had previously climbed down, and approximately one hour later we could look back and see the exact part of the cliff were the Gullwings and Co. would, or should, have been. All the time the pyreflies floated past overhead. It seemed as if they were pulling back when we could not keep up.
After ages of none of us speaking, except to ask Victoria the time (the only person who happened to ever wear a watch, out of all of us), we were still on the undeviating path. Over time, I had double-backed past Martha and Victoria. I was second last in the line, with Holly behind me.
"OMIGOD" Holly suddenly screamed, causing the rest of us to spin around in revelation. Holly was staring at something in the distance behind us, her eyes opened so wide they looked the size of tennis balls. I'm not sure how long it took for us to notice it, because for me, time seemed to slow.
A ginormous rock, no, boulder, was hurtling towards us at least 100 miles per hour. In space of a few fractions of a second, I managed to calculate that the boulder was going to come crashing down on us in a roughly 4 seconds. That may seem impressive, but it was really quite obvious at that moment of time.
I don't remember what happened exactly, my brain wasn't exactly picking up details, but I can vaguely remember all of us running, while the boulder was coming closer. The boulder started to fall downwards, instead of along, and I could see the shadow growing larger on the ground. It was sometime then that I realized the boulder was going to land on Holly, if she didn't run faster. I can also remember Victoria appearing at my shoulder and grabbing Holly's right arm and shoulder, while I grabbed her left. Together we hauled her forward, the exact milli-second the boulder came crashing down.
Time returned to normal. I was lying on the ground, gasping, eyes closed. I heard Martha and Lillie run forward, yelling, and I opened my eyes ever so slightly. From my vantage point I could see Victoria slowly sit up, and Lillie and Martha were running over to Holly, who was lying on the ground, knocked unconscious. I can remember looking and think, Omigod, the boulder's not even lying a centimetre from her feet! That's when I realized that the boulder was actually on her foot!
I bolted upright, yelling"Holly"
We all crowded round her. "She's not … dead, right" Victoria asked. Lillie knelt down and put her two fingers against Holly's neck.
"No" She replied"Not dead, just unconscious."
"And with a crushed foot" I pointed out solemnly, pointing to the part where Holly's ankle stopped, and the boulder began. "I bet her parents won't be too pleased when we go home if she doesn't have a foot"
I stopped short, realizing what I had said. If we go home, I thought.
Victoria rubbed her chin thoughtfully"Do you reckon a bit of white magic could heal this? I am in the White Mage dress sphere, after all" She waved her hand at her clothes.
Martha nodded in agreement"Yeah, white magic should fix it up. One problem though" She said, and then pushed hard against the boulder. When it didn't moved an inch she finished"But you're gonna have to move this thing first."
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A/N: Okay people, remember, this is NOT the last chapter! I would never stop here, so like I said, you're looking at 2 more chapters, plus the epilogue! Review!