The aches faded, the world both brightening and darkening around her. Tifa blinked. Wind whistled in the distance, distance growls, snarls, snippets of what might be conversation floated on the air. And ahead was the comforting glow of the Hunter's Lantern. Another failure. The pain was gone, but the memory remained vivid; the missed blow, the rake of the creature's claws across her.
Her stumble, her fall to the ground and the beginning of her end. She shook head and stood. The mechanisms of the effective immortality remained unclear. Something to do with the Mako perhaps – or those seeking it. Or perhaps something to do with the contract she signed in the depths of the Shinra mansion? An age ago in many ways and yet in truth nothing more than a few hours. Time was strange here in Nibelheim. The moon shifted across the sky to some unknowable and astronomically absurd pattern. The stars were wrong.
And to compliment aggressive and unhelpful inhabitants (or they acted as if they lived here), were the varying breeds and incarnations of monsters. Sharp claws, blunt bludgeoning blocks, lurking crows and transforming people. All walked abroad this night. Obstacles or puzzles; best avoided or destroyed. The deaths were strange. What guilt should have preoccupied her after the results of her first act of self-defence vanished when awaking at a different lantern. Those same figures; humanoid or monstrous reappeared in the same places and as fresh obstacles.
Until – by some mechanism she had not caught – they did not reappear; their bodies dissolving into red mist or else remaining as hazards in the dance of violence Tifa now adopted. Weapons scavenged from where she could find them, taken from dead bodies if necessary. Always unnerving and uncomfortable.
Some of these once wielded by others like her – what the few people here who were capable of holding conversation referred to as 'Hunters'. Unclear if they could find solace at the lanterns; unclear if they too could seek the strange garden beyond, the always smiling woman in the pink dress willing to perform some arcane practice and increase Tifa's strength. That place apart from time, apart from here – and yet oddly familiar but enclosed, its borders lost in a thick mist – the suggestion of distant pillars near provoking agoraphobia.
But the Hunters would not remain wandering Nibelheim streets again once cut down. They seemed more finite than her. Or did it come back to the unclear time? How her memory since arrival stretched to what could effectively be weeks, but the span of the night had yet to end and the comforting light of dawn was far from near. And there remained the question of Cloud. He was here too – notionally another Hunter. But unlike the others, he made no move to attack her on-sight. And yet, he seemed distant, almost haunted. Or perhaps he interacted with her and did not believe she was there or real. Perhaps he out of all of the others was most clearly somehow linked back to the lamps and the garden.
Speculation; there had not been much chance to talk. Cloud wielding an immense sword now – one he proved useful with when a strange and monstrous figure burst from a boarded-up door. Tifa lost track of Cloud in the confusion, forced to fight a powerful and agile quarry in the cramped confines of the basement lab – with nothing but her fists for defence.
Other weapons to be had after, though none as natural for her as the skills imparted by Master Zangan. Improbable saws she could flick out into longer blades, swords in stone wielded together – not extracted as per storybook fantasy of old, whirling circular-saw blades mounted on staves. Another lantern in the beast-man's wake – and no trace of Cloud anywhere.
That he was still in the town at all indicated survival up until this instance – chances were good he was more than capable of surviving still. But where had he gone? Somewhere ahead perhaps on her circuitous path. Up out of the Shinra mansion via an unknown stair and through an overgrown garden she would scarcely believed existed as a child. Across a badly maintained cliff-side track, the horrors of the Nibel mountain descending upon this possible prey as she ran from lantern to lantern.
Until here; the path plunging down the mountain-side to an unfamiliar settlement close to Nibelheim. New or old and somehow never known to her? The truth did not matter for now – a monster lurked at the end of the path, a gigantic creature on four spindly legs topped with curved claws, its fur crackly with electricity. How many times had she tried to pass, subdue or kill this fresh obstacle?
Time to try again; behind was an unwanted retracing of her steps – and was it possible to get out through the Shinra mansion? Wait. A glyph nearby. A rune – not unlike the strange tokens in the garden. A bell sigil. Help. Tifa dug into her pockets; the bell still a curiosity, seemingly slipped into her pocket by the Flower Girl. "Ring it. And if there is aid, it will beckon it to you."
Magic of a kind not familiar, but her endless loops around the lanterns – like a moth to a flame – were another unfamiliar magic.
She rang the bell, the tinkling sound echoing oddly in the air. Nothing.
So much for-
A burst of light from the nearby ground, a figure straightening from a crouch – a huge blade resting against his shoulder. Tifa grinned. Cloud Strife stood beside her. Together they might be able to best this latest problem.