Chapter Seven: Citadel of the Four
"No one touches my princess! Light warriors? You impertinent fools. I, Garland, will knock you all down!"
Garland, Final Fantasy I
"It seems like we have reached our destination," Jakk said, looking ahead and up at the citadel. They were awestruck by the site: here, only a league's clearing out of the dark forests, a massive temple of stone and metal rose out, jagged teeth of spires towering over the sea, a dark bastion in the middle of the world.
A lone gate was the only egress to the Temple of Fiends, and as the Warriors neared it, uneasy thoughts came back to their minds, as they wondered what they were doing. But Klad strode forward, shaking off any thoughts. The others followed his example.
"Leave the horses outside. They have enough wit not to run off, especially after the wolves." Getting off his horse, Klad gave Strider a pat, and drew his sword.
"Let's get this over with, quickly," he said, grimly. He walked to the entrance, pushing open the gates and disappearing into the gloom of the stone archway.
Jakk and Aki looked at each other dubiously, but then the thief put his hand on his slim rapier and nimbly ran inside.
"Ready, Aki?" The mage was feeling something up his sleeve: a knife. His voice was hoarse and low, but still radiated a gentle calm.
The young girl sighed, once, and nodded to her companion. "Ready."
They walked inside.
The Vampire didn't like hot places like the Gurgu Volcano. Of course, he had no choice but to obey. His creators were inside, and they could easily uncreate him as they created him.
Is it done?
The pale skinned man stopped in his tracks, as he entered the main chamber, lava fountains spewing gently in vertical flows of hot liquid, while pumice were sculpted in figures of the four warriors of Light. Kary, the Fire Fiend, enjoyed creature comforts.
But that voice...no, those voices. He hated them. The Alatari liked to play tricks on the minds of their creations, speaking to them telepathically than use their mouths.
He bowed, low, and just once, as the four Fiends lounged around in the main chamber, Kary, in the center, sitting on a throne. She had taken the form of a woman with multiple arms and long, wheat colored hair. The slender body was fiery red, a color that couldn't be matched by any other crimson. It almost burned the Vamp's eyes to look at it.
The other Fiends had their forms too: Tiamat, as a many headed snake, Kraken, as a Naga, a serpentine body with a man's head, and Lich, a resurrected skeleton of a long dead princess of Tekam, ghostly orbs on a skeletal head with a tiara on her head.
The Vamp smiled. They cannot yet take much physical form. It was true. The Fiends, like their counterparts, the Friends, were only phantoms, ghosts, spirits, that had no physical shape unless it was one of their creations, like a Naga or the other beasts that the Alatari had used so effectively during the First Age, in the Shattering of the World.
"Well, is it?" The Naga hissed, it's watery-blue body moving back and forth. "I wish to get out of this hell-hole and back into my habitat."
"Really? Is it too harsh for you, all this fire and ash?" Kary retorted, taking a fiery flame sword and slicing one of the dummies of a Light Warrior into a pile of ash.
"Your creatures are born and bred of fire, and cannot do much else, unlike the seas, which are not created but there. Fire must be created, and therein lies your weakness," Kraken shot back.
Before Kary could add more to the flames, Tiamat cut in, a head moving towards the arguing pair. "Silence, you fools of another age!" Flames and water being doused by the Air Fiend, who was the oldest and strongest of the four, he reared another head towards the undead. "Lich, what have your spies to report? And you, Vampire?"
Lich bowed. She was the most obedient of the three Fiends, the earth's longevity and patience in all things rendering her patient and cunning as well.
"Spies from Amlador and Tekam report that the Four have left the city grounds and moved north, to our old sanctuary, our Temple. Garland has taken the princess there. There are also unusual reports that the Sages have begun moving from all over the world to Crescent Lake."
Tiamat nodded with his main head. "They have been warned then, that the Fiends have been loosed. Probably by Lukahn, that old fool. And you, Vampire?"
"My lord, the Tari chose the most bland to be these...warriors. One is a lowly knight guarding the Dream Castle, another a thief. The third, a healer of a backwoods village. The fourth, the black mage..." The Vamp frowned, his front teeth showing dramatically.
"The fourth is unknown to me, yet his own companions know not of where he is from."
The Four turned their heads to the Undead. "Unknown?" Kary said, almost to herself. "Where did he come from?
The Vamp frowned again. "A ship captain said he was from the Blighted Lands, brought by the king."
Kary had stopped her musing, her red orbs opening wider, as she turned to Tiamat. "Surely it cannot be..."
The many headed serpent shook his head. "If he is, then so be it. We will kill them all, without a doubt."
Kraken spoke up, his sluggish voice suddenly turning slithery as his body. "Why kill them?" he asked, sliding forward and avoiding a gush of lava pouring from a fountain. "Why not make use of them, turn them to our advantage?'
Lich laughed, bones clinking together to form a surreal rhythmic pounding. "Are you suggesting that we try to defect the Warriors that have the souls of our antitheses? We would be mad to try." Her sharp eyes turned towards Tiamat, rattling furiously. "Best to kill them and conquer this world we have been stuck on for millenias."
"We turned the kings of Amlador and Tekam to our side...would it be so hard to do the same with these wretched fools? They are nothing special, nothing of high blood, only a thief, soldier, and two mages," Kraken retorted.
Tiamat nodded.
"They may be used, yet. If it is possible, it would be best to pursue that course, instead of killing them." He looked at the other three of his kin. "It would make our conquest of Gaia much easier."
He motioned to the Vampire for his new tasks.
Jakk stood motionless at the door of the alcove, wanting to quietly edge out of the dungeon. The two mages were there too, watching the clash of metal upon metal reverberate across the chamber, two Knights of Coneria fighting furiously.
Once all four had entered the Temple, they had not been greeted by what they didn't want: no Garland with his sword, no undead creatures, no Imps. Just the uneasy feeling of something ahead and a musty smell wafting through their nostrils, while another door not twenty paces ahead of them emerged from the gloom.
All of them seemed to be drawn to that door, that large, cryptic room with its iron hinges and brass handles gleaming, as if recently polished, though no one, except for Garland and the Princess had been there for thousands of years. Klad seemed to know what lay ahead. With one had on the hilt of his sword, he walked to the wide doors and pushed them open.
With candles dimly lit inside, the chamber revealed Sara, Princess of Coneria, bound and unconscious in an rocky throne in the center, behind a stone plate intricately decorated with the Fiends themselves, and their former adobes.
And then Garland came, jumping out from the shadows, a mask disguising his face, his purple cape flapping...Klad parried a blow meant to decapitate all of the party's heads with his own sword, and leapt into the fray.
And that's where we're at now...Jakk thought, stilled numbed by the two knights fighting.
The black mage wanted to help the knight, but he was hesitating and unsure where to cast his spell as they clashed.
"He's distracting Garland so we can rescue the Princess," Aki murmured, grasping the situation.
"Then Jakk, you go and rescue her," Bane said.
Jakk awoke from his dream like state, and choked. "What? Me? I'm...a thief! I can't get across those two!"
"You said you are a thief, Jakk. Does that not apply here, when we need the most nimblest of our group to get across? Besides," Aki said, smiling, "our robes would not hasten our step." Five bats, flittering around in the shadows of the cave, seemed to echo the serious amusement of Aki, cheerfully flying inside the chamber. Bane gave them a long look, as if reminiscing, and then turned his stare at the two knights fighting not twenty paces from them.
Jakk started...and then regained his composure, nodding, and then proceeding to dash off, as the two mages watched anxiously.
Meanwhile, Klad and Garland thrusted and parried each others' blows, waltzing away from each other as in a dance to the death. "Their fighting is evenly matched, whoever tutored them in the art of sword fighting did it well," Bane commented, now calm, hands at his sides as he watched them fight. Quickly, Jakk ran behind to two, reaching the stony throne where Sara sat limp and unmoving.
Garland saw this, as he threw Klad on the ground, and turning his sword on the running Jakk.
Calmly, Bane lifted his palms from the depths of his dark blue robes, whispered an incantation, and bolts of lightning exploded from his palms, catching Garland's armor and burning flesh into a delicate crisp. He let out a shriek, let go of his sword, and crumpled, smoke fuming from the armor plates and his mask.
Jakk hesitated, and then lowered himself to remove the mask, but the Knight's strong arm stopped.
"Don't. It's not need. We've done our task." He motioned to the still-form of Sara. "We must get her out."
And swiftly they left the bastion of the Fiends, leaving the body of Garland in the chamber besides the stone plate, and five bats nervously brooding on the ceiling.