I had intended for this chapter to be significantly longer and get through specific events but it's 1am, I am tired. I do hope you accept this half chapter!
"Well what the hell do we do now?" Gladiolus asked, taking stock of the small tomb. Noctis was leaning over the carving of his ancestor. Ignis was kneeling down in the corner looking at Aranea's ankle, said woman peeling off her boot to look at the limb grabbed by one of the blighted branch.
Noctis curled his fingers, gripping the stone edge of the sarcophagus trying to catch his breath. His friend's voice sounded low and distorted, a warble making discerning his words difficult. He squinted, the distortion making him dizzy.
"Stuck here until daylight I guess." Aranea suggested, voice trailing off at the end. "Umm… hey, Princey, you okay over there?" she asked. The others looked at him, and Noctis tried to right himself and focus on their situation. His chest felt heavier than usual, and the itch in his palms was even more intense.
The Star of the Rogue had felt like very summoning of his ancestor's weapons. He felt a magnetic-like tug when he reached over his ancestor's stone likeness, but when it appeared above the ethereal blue weapon was streaked with black, and when it impacted his chest the pain lingered and tried to pull him to the ground as it faded into an intense heaviness. His limbs felt slow, and the pounding of his heart in his ears felt eerily slow. The air smelled metallic to him, but he sensed that he would be the only one to notice.
"Yeah. I'll be fine. I don't think waiting until daylight will work, it wasn't even dusk when shit went down." Noctis answered her. But Six did he want to simply lie down and sleep until morning. The heaviness began to fade, but as it left malaise started to settle into his body. He rubbed his face with a groan, trying to clear the fog in his brain. He could hear Ignis trying to come up with an idea, Gladiolus countering it. "I think we have to just make a break for it."
"A break for it? We hardly made it into this place!" Aranea gestured at the door, eyes wide, extended arm locked stiff.
"Can you even run with this leg?" Ignis asked. A look at her ankle showed bands of red and blistered skin, edges of already popped blisters grey and the exposed flesh oozing yellow-orange fluid.
"I think its just the skin. I ran here okay." she shrugged. "But I think run now, run in the morning, we're pretty screwed either way."
"Everything didn't happen the moment we arrived so time of day did indeed matter." Ignis answered, his slow speech betraying how hard he was trying to keep his tone level.
"We can't just sit here." Noctis countered.
"I agree, we can't just sit here with our thumbs up our asses. There has to be a way out of here." Gladiolus stated, starting to pace the small room. Noctis wanted to just burst out of the tomb, eyes flickering around as he tried to determine if the room was smaller than when they first entered it. The stone walls were old, and in the corner a black vine seemed to have found a gap in the mortar. He followed it and saw it reached the edge of the actual resting place of his ancestor.
"Noct!" he jerked, looking up at Gladiolus. "You all right?" he asked, grabbing the Prince's shoulder hard. Noctis nodded, bringing a hand up to run through his hair.
"Yeah. Yeah I'm okay just…"
"Distracted? I can see that. We need you to focus! We have no chance of getting the hell out of here in one piece if your brain is orbiting a different star."
"We're making a break for it?" Noctis asked.
"You weren't paying any attention? Shit, this is like highschool again. Maybe I do need to kick your ass with some sparring once we get out of this shit show." he grumbled. Noctis looked at the tomb, distracted for a moment by the itching in his palms. He wanted to call his Engine blade, wondering if the cold metal would ease this damnable pruitis.
"Armiger." Noctis stated, jerking his head up to look at Gladiolus. "I can clear a path out of here with Armiger. I think once I hack the trees with it they won't reach back down right away."
"Will that work? Also… what's Armiger?" Aranea asked, and Noctis nearly demonstrated but Ignis had cut him off,
"It's the name of the ability Noctis has to summon his ancestor's weapons. You've seen him use it at times." Ignis explained.
"Oh the freaky tornado thing? Didn't know it had a name." She responded, and shrugged with a slight shake of her head. "Well if it gets us back to the car so we can gun it the hell out of here I say fire it up!" she gestured towards the tomb's door.
"Let's go." Noctis mumbled. He was through the door, glad there was no further debate behind him. Outside, he looked around at the trees reaching towards the tomb with their black tentacle-like branches, waving in unnaturally fluid movements. He could easily identify the path they had taken here with the damaged trees, limp branches brushing against the ground quivering and fractured. He looked behind him, stepping ahead until he was satisfied with the distance between him and his friends and finally answered that damnable itch.
His weapons appeared, spinning around him in black and blue blurs. He rushed forward and hit the first trees that reached down for him. The low hissing turned into high-pitched screams and the air itself felt like it shook. The orange lights hiding amongst the trees went dim as he rushed forward, fingers flexing and gripping the air, his weapons obeying his desires as he swung an empty hand to see a weapon arc at the blackness reaching for him. His toes hardly touched the ground as he moved forward, black water splashing up against his pants. He glanced behind him, seeing the path they had torn through the trees. With a wince he saw that it wasn't water that had been splashing up against him when his feet touched the ground. Broken branches lay strewn across the ground, the wailing trees flailed the damaged stumps of their branches spraying a dark liquid through the air.
His friends were charging through the semi-cleared path that he had created, and turned back ahead of him. The woods seemed darker than when they arrived, and the once vanished orange glows grew brighter as they reappeared. He rushed onward, unable to risk the trees' recovery to fight the bombs making their new home in the daytime of Myrlwood. How the hell are they out during the day? He flew forward, already a deep ache pouring into his limbs. His blood felt as if it was liquid metal. Burning through his body and weighing him down. He staggered, Armiger flickering for a moment before growing steady again. His eyes ached, feeling dry and windburnt. The trees thinned as they moved away from the tomb, but he couldn't make out the Regalia.
"Prompto! Crowe!" he called out, wondering if he was charging in the wrong direction. A few more meters forward and Armiger flickered again. He looked around, the trees felt distant enough that he let himself crash into the ground. He landed in a thick puddle, spitting bitter liquid when it splashed up into his face. The trees around him quivered and hissed, long liquid branches reaching for him just out of reach. The ache and heaviness lifted as his weapons vanished, and the itch returned to his palms and climbed up his arms. He groaned, and heard wet footsteps charging behind him.
"Noct! You okay?" He heard Gladiolus's gruff voice.
"I couldn't hold it any longer." Noctis apologized, shading his head and tried to lift himself up. A strong arm wrapped around his back and lifted him to his feet. He let himself lean against his Shield before trying to stand unsupported.
"You okay man?"
"Yeah. Everyone?" he turned to the others.
"Yeah we made it through, thanks to you. Though got a nice shower in… whatever that stuff was. It's sticky like tree sap. I'll scrub my skin until I rub it off once we get to a shower." Aranea grimaced. She had pulled off an overshirt so she was only wearing her sports bra and was busy trying to wipe off the sticky ebony liquid off of her.
"It doesn't smell like anything." Noctis observed, realizing that he too was coated in the stuff.
"Is your nose broken? It smells like burnt metal!" Aranea retorted. Noctis frowned, bringing his fingers to his nose and sniffed, and shook his head again.
"Is… is that the Regalia?" Ignis asked, his voice catching in his throat, arm extended and pointing past Gladiolus and Noctis. They all turned to see what he was gesturing at, and saw a vine-coated dome. It took a moment to realize that the dome was not made of stone, but was the car itself. The vines that had wound around the fencing of the parking area had expanded rapidly and coated the car.
"Prompto! Crowe!" There was a series of calls for the names of their companions, but there was no sign of them. They looked on the ground but saw no human-sized lumps. There was no cry back, no screaming. No sign of their friends.
"Shit! Where are they?" Noctis asked, answered with wide terrified eyes.
Lunafreya's head was throbbing in tune with the pain in her arm, her ribs. The entirety of her body was sore and heavy. The road was bumpy, and she looked up into the clear sky. She wanted to find comfort in the brilliant stars above her head, but the words of the men in the pickup's cabin were echoing through her mind. She turned her arm over and tried to make a shield appear around some dust above her head, but with the speed of the moving car had trouble maintaining her target. Or perhaps it was the intense fatigue. The thought of trying to jump from the moving truck was shoved aside. Even if she managed not to kill herself, surely her captors would figure out quite quickly what she had done, and she would never outrun two healthy hunters in her condition.
She endured the drive, constantly debating the risk of jumping from the car. When they passed by a creek she wondered if she could swim. Stopped for an intersection the thought about rolling into a ditch. Each flighty thought shoved away as soon as it arose. She shivered, though the night air didn't feel particularly cold. Her body felt like it was constantly switching between her fight-or-flight response, and the loud bellowing call of sleep. She gripped the small blanket that had been draped over her for this ride, blinking away tears.
You can't escape the car. But perhaps you can escape the base. Or from the Nifleheimer who comes to recollect you. You are not going back. You are not going back.She tried to reassure herself. She thought of scenarios. Of leaping from an airship again. Perhaps she could concentrate all her energy, all her prayers to Shiva, into creating a shield that could last without her direct focus to trap her potential captor and run. A hard jolt in the car caused her to help and hiss, an arm wrapping around herself to grip the reawakened agony in her arm and ribs.
"Shit, be more careful" Jacob snapped. There was some creaking as he turned in his seat, leaning out the opened window separating the cabin and the truck bed. "You okay? Got some store-bought pain killers in the glove compartment." He frowned at her, brows knit closely together. She met his eyes, her own brow furrowed.
"No." she answered, and took a deep inhale and exhale as the initial shock of pain wore away into a lasting sharp heat.
"Almost there. Then you can get some proper rest… Dana knows what she's doin', she'll set you straight." he tried to assure her, but when no ease found its way into her expression he settled back into the passenger seat of his car with another creak. The rest of the ride was a continuous cycle of the previous; the occasional bump making her vision go white with pain, dull conversation between Jacob and Randall that she decided she was too tired to try and eavesdrop on, the smell of wood fires as they drove past small encampments. The smell had her thinking back to the friendly banter of sitting around a fire in a haven, a warm plate of food on her lap and coffee in her mug. Noctis's voice beside her, the occasional brush of his fingertips against her hand. She bit her lip, tears stinging her eyes. But her attention was jolted back when the car slammed to a stop with a lot of cursing. She was tossed in the truck's bed, impacting the back and momentarily her vision went white and coherency blurred away.
When she returned to awareness both men climbed out of the trucks cabin and were climbing up into the bed in the back of the truck with her, one crouched next to her the other holding a rifle up and muttering something to the one next to her in a rapid quivering voice.
"What?" she murmured, sick of lying down and being treated like a rag doll, sitting up despite the pressure on her good shoulder trying to push her back down.
"Shh!" The standing man hissed, and she realized it was Jacob.
"Iron Giant." Randall whispered to her, tilting his head in the direction they had been driving in.
"What to do… can the car handle driving off the road? Go around the jerk?" Jacob asked, turning to look at his companion.
"You think this shitbox can handle driving on dirt? These tires are smooth as a baby's ass, surprised they haven't gone flat from a fleck of sand." Randal complained, looking around for any further signs of daemon activity.
"There's usually bombs with Iron Giants." Lunafreya added. The trio paused, all falling back in the bed of the truck as it rattled with a sudden hard shaking with a loud humm in the air changing into a low-pitched rumble. The shaking lasted only fifteen seconds, and the noise had all three trying to get back up and find the Iron Giant that would have surely been attracted to the noise caused by the rattling truck. Lunafreya felt thick dread settling into her chest as she wondered if the old vehicle could even still drive after such a shake, but made a mental note to think about the brief earthquake later. The air remained thick with sound, but not enough to protect them from the daemon's attention.
"I'm gonna shoot it." Jacob insisted, bringing the rifle up to aim.
"What? No!" Randall barked, and the daemon bellowed. Lunafreya and Randall slapped their hands over their ears, startled by the shout. Their hands hardly muffled the sound of the rifle as Jacob fired it. The daemon wailed again, and brought it's two-meter long blade down in an arc, burying a quarter of its length into the pavement.
"I think you just pissed it off!" Randall snapped. In the darkness it was difficult to tell where they came from, but seemingly from thin air two bombs emerged and swelled, trembling and hissing in answer to the cry of the iron giant. Lunafreya's face blanched, eyes flickering from the giant to the rifle in Jacob's hand. He pulled the trigger again, and fiddled with a ball-tipped L-shaped handle on the gun before firing a third shot.
"Randy, get my bullets from the glove box! I'm down to my last shot!" Jacob snapped. The Iron Giant brought its enormous wedge of metal up from the ground, sending specks of asphalt towards the car hitting the hood with small plinks. It side-stepped then turned to get away from the truck's headlights and onto the side of the road, swinging its blade, the tip less than a meter from tearing into the vehicle. Jacob was trying to steady his gun, Randall was halfway inside the truck's cabin with his legs still poking through the window separating the two sections as he tried to tear through the piles of maps, store receipts, spare socks and gloves, tools, to find the requested box of bullets.
"Why do you keep so much shit in here!"
"My fuckin' bullets!"
"I can't find them with all the damn junk!" Jacob cursed, the gun clicked, and the final shot was fired. The Iron Giant bellowed again, staggering back from a bloom of black in the side of its head, adding to the three in its chest. It raised its blade, and Lunafreya threw her hands up. Her shield lit up in its distinct pentagons, and she cried out in pain as she felt the shock of the blade through her fractured arm, forcing her to draw it against her chest, breath hitching as she tried to collect herself. She let out several hard breaths, watching the bombs that accompanied the giant start to inflate. She brought up her good arm the other one still curled around herself, and the shield flickered back to life. She felt the intense heat of the explosion, pain roaring across her skin and she let out another cry, but kept her trembling arm in place, eyes squinted tight against the bright light of the bombs' explosions. She looked into the cabin where Randall was drawing his legs full inside.
"Drive!"
Noctis had to drop his Armiger to approach the Regalia without damaging the car. He was still looking around for signs of his friends. He looked up into the trees, their thick black branches reaching and trembling made discerning anything difficult. He called for them again, the trees hissed in answer. He could see more distant glowing and turned around to see all the bombs that they had run past were now converging behind them. He cursed, gritting his teeth together. His three companions drew close to him now that he dropped the whirlwind of weapons, mimicking Noctis's dancing movements as they also tried to find any sign of the missing two.
"Maybe they're in the car." Aranea suggested, the other three quick to agree with her. Noctis called his Engine Blade, fingers wrapping tight around the handle. He grunted and ran, hacking at the black tendrils that were wound around the car. Closer to them he could see they were pulsing and slithering slowly, tightening the grip around the car.
"What the hell is going on." Gladiolus asked, joining him. Ignis hesitated for a moment, looking at the daggers in his hand and walked over as well, beside Aranea to try and cut the Regalia free. He slowly sawed through the black liquid-like branch. He cut one bit free and it wrapped back around his wrist. Pain flared in the skin that contacted the liquid oozing from the stump of the vine. Ignis yelled, leaping to his feet and stumbled away from the car. "Careful! Once you cut them they grab you!" his voice was high-pitched, chest rising and falling rapidly and the muscles in his neck stood out.
"Shit! Watch out!" Aranea barked, rushing to him and her polearm made a tall arc as she brought her weapon over her head and down over the injured vine-like extension. Ignis leapt backwards closer to the Regalia, staring wide eyed at the liquid movements of the thrashing former branch. "You okay there sexy glasses?" She asked.
"Yeah." He answered her, straining to unwrap the severed tissue from his wrist. He threw it to the ground, looking around for his discarded daggers to impale the unnatural thing, stepping away from it as it continued to slither on the ground. "What is this? I've never seen…" He mumbled. He eyed his weapons, grabbing it and stabbing through the unnatural black tissue pinning it to the ground. "'Nea! Back up!" he called to her. She back-stepped until she was out of reach of the severed branch, looking at the ground to the car to the increased pulsing in the agitated black former-branches of the hissing trees.
"Look!" Noctis called over the chaos. Aranea and Ignis turned and saw both Noctis and Gladiolus madly hacking and pulling away the vines coating the car. After several hacks they were able to see through the car's passenger window that Crowe and Prompto were huddled together in the back of the car.
"We'll get you out!" Gladiolus called, redoubling his efforts.
"Get out?! How about you come in and we get the fuckity-fuck out of here!" Crowe snapped back, her voice muffled by the enclosed car. It felt like it took an hour to free the car, the four companions coated in sweat by the time they had removed enough of the black tendrils to clamber into the Regalia. The trees were reaching for them again, their black vine-like branches crawling across the ground. Aranea climbed atop Ignis's lap in the passenger seat, Gladiolus taking point in the driver's side as the two men hadn't paid attention to their usual arrangement in their mad scramble into the car.
"You guys okay?" Ignis asked, tying to look over his shoulder with some difficulty with Aranea tightly packed in the small space between his lap and the dashboard.
"Interview later, drive now!" Crowe barked. Prompto was busy hugging Noctis who was sitting behind the passenger seat, himself in the middle, and Crowe slapping Gladiolus's shoulder hard repeating go go go! The car spun in place for a moment, the dusty soil dampened into a thin layer of mud from the dark drainage oozing from the slashed tentacle branches before with a jolt accelerated forward once the tires gripped the still dry soil beneath. The car lurched, swerving as Gladiolus struggled to regain control from the unexpected lurch. They spun down the road, until the mad swamp was behind them and they were back up on the main road. Clear of the Myrlwood light didn't greet them. The sky was black, the stars obscured by clouds.
"What the hell?" Gladiolus asked, echoed by the others who were similarly confused as they stared out the windows.
"How long were we in there?" Ignis asked in a muted tone. He squinted down at the car's clock, and saw that it was just after midnight.
"Pull over…" Noctis asked, once the threat seemed far behind them.
"It's dark. We need to get somewhere safe. And apparently have all our heads examined." Gladiolus grumbled.
"Pull. Over." He repeated. Gladiolus could hear the grunt hidden in Noctis's words and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. The car had hardly come to a stop when the Prince staggered out of the car and started heaving dark bile onto the pavement. Crowe and Prompto got out of the car behind him, the others doing so as well.
"Hey, Aranea. What happened to the bike?" Crowe asked, quirking a brow.
"Shit… I didn't think of that. We saw you guys missing and the car covered in… whatever those nightmare things are called."
"Lots of cuddling then?" Prompto asked, then walked towards Gladiolus with extended arms. Said man held his palm out, pushing against the blond's face as he tried to give the Shield a hug.
"Lots of rest." he grumbled back. "Noct you okay?"
"I feel like shit." he answered.
"We were apparently in there for hours…" Ignis observed, and started pacing the length of the car. "How is this possible? I could have sworn we were in there three hours at best. Not nearly ten hours." His musing was interrupted when a dull humm filled the air, and the ground began to shake. The humm turned into a low-pitched rumbling. Ignis braced himself on the car's hood, Aranea losing her balance and was thrown against him. Noctis crouched to the street; Gladiolus, Crowe, and Prompto forced to do the same. The shaking only lasted a quarter minute, though the noise continued for some time after.
"What was that? Earthquake?" Prompto asked, knitting his brows together.
"Whatever we just spend three hours in a forest to come out ten hours later." Gladiolus answered him.
"Anyone else have a headache?" Noctis asked. The others paused for a moment, and then answered yes. All of them did, indeed, have a headache.
Lunafreya was trying to breathe, her good arm extended and holding a shield around the car while they sped away. She maintained it, her limb trembling and her teeth biting hard enough into her lip to draw blood, until the giant was long behind them, and there was so sign of anything else ahead of them. Her head began to feel light and she tried to squint through the blur in her vision before she fell over, and never felt the impact of landing on her bad arm.
When she came to, Randall was shaking her shoulder and helping her sit up. She looked around, finding it difficult to discern her surroundings in the dark. She sat upright and groaned, hugging her bad arm and wincing as the pain echoed through the rest of her body.
"We're here. Let's get you to Dana."
"So she can call upon someone from the Empire to collect me?" she inquired, locking eyes with the hunter. She could see the fatigue in his face. The dark circles around his eyes, and his pale complexion seemed to glow in the dim lights of the area they parked.
"Uh, shit… umm… you probably overheard wrong and-"
"You need the money on my bounty for food." she cut him off. His gaze was wandering. The arm she had wrapped around her wrist and the spreading bruise. The window of the truck, something deeper into the camp. "I have a proposition that I think will satisfy all involved parties." she offered.
