Now, I'm aware I haven't updated in ages. Bu tI'm sure you've all heared about something called 'writer's block' (or however that's spelled). Now that's what I suffered from. I have more to say about this matter, but I'll leave it for after this chapter. For those still alive, enjoy:

Chapter 14: Towards the end of the Quest

The Masamune sliced through the air and severed the head of the Phoenix bird that had been foolish enough to attack me. In an instant, the bird burned away to ashes that were blown away by the wind, beginning their long fall down towards the foot of Magma rock.

"Challenges…" I muttered. "Monsters simply are no challenges." I let out a bored sigh before jumping towards a higher cliff, my levitation powers aiding me greatly. I landed softly on the hot, grey ground and looked down towards the others. Mia was right behind me, climbing up the path I had freed from any monsters for her. As she almost reached the cliff I was standing on, I helped her and pulled her up. She smiled briefly at me, and I smiled back.

"I don't know how you convinced them." I smirked. "But I must admit you did it pretty dang well. Isaac and Felix didn't bother me with questions at all, not even when I was alone."

"Well, even a healer can get a point across, you know." She grinned back. Then her look got a bit more worried. "Are you okay, though, Sephiroth? No problems with monsters or so?"

I let out a warm laugh. "Please, Mia. No offence, but such concern is unnecessary. I'd be surprised if I'd find anything on this big clump of earth that could even land a hit on me."

"Overconfidence comes before the fall of the mighty." Mia said seriously.

"True." I admitted. "But I'm afraid that in this case, it's not overconfidence, but simply the truth. Might change if we go to mars Lighthouse though. Who knows what awaits us there."

"You know." Mia pointed out, at which I laughed again.

"True, again. Well, not really know Mia. I just… have an idea of what to expect. I can't look in the future. I have great powers, but unfortunately that one isn't in my possession."

"Consider yourself lucky for that." The mercury adept replied slowly. "I'm not sure such power could be considered a blessing."

"True, again." I laughed. Then I shrugged. "We might as well keep going. Felix and Jenna are ahead already. How far are the others?"

"Sheba and Ivan are climbing up the cliff we're standing on as we speak." Mia replied, sounding amused at my failing of noticing them. "And Garet, Isaac and Piers aren't far behind together with Kraden."

"He sure does keep up well, for an old bag of bones." I grinned.

We heard a loud "I heard that!" coming from below, which almost cracked me up. As I helped Ivan and Sheba up the cliff, I could feel Mia's gaze in my back. I looked over my shoulder to her.

"Something wrong, Mia?" I asked slowly. She shook her head.

"I just realized… You're being a lot more light-hearted and happy lately. Like something heavy has fallen of your shoulders." Her reply came. I bit my lip thoughtfully.

"It's true that I feel relieved and happier. But, the burdens I carry are the same."

"I feared so." She sighed.

I stood up again and prepared to siege the next part of our climb to the top of Magma Rock.

"Well, we should really continue now, or that old bag of bones will catch up with us and skin me alive." I grabbed the Masamune and prepared to jump, but Ivan's voice stopped me.

"How about letting us get some monsters, Sephiroth? We'd like to grow stronger too, you know." He sounded a tad annoyed.

"Excuse me, oh almighty warrior in training. You should have said so sooner, and then I wouldn't have slaughtered those monsters that were about to knock you off the cliff."

"Stop teasing him already!" Sheba cried out, fake anger in her voice. She grabbed Ivan by his hand and dragged him ahead. "Come on Ivan, let's show grey-hair that we can slay all monsters on our way up long before he even has raised his hand to swing the Masamune!"

Mia and I laughed as we watched the two Jupiter adepts climb up, taking the path both Felix and Jenna took. Ivan had his Swift Sword firmly in his hand, ready to strike any monster that got too close to him. Or Sheba.

"You better keep an eye on them, Sephiroth." Mia said, looking at me from the corners of her eyes. "I know she's strong, but sometimes Sheba's a little too energetic. She could get in trouble, and drag Ivan in it along with her."

I laid my hand assuring on her shoulder. "Don't worry Mia. Those two will do just fine. They get along great and can work together great as well. Honestly, I'd be more worried about those monsters they are about to slay. Before I even raised my Masamune, I might add."

And with that said, we followed the two Jupiter adepts.

---

"It's a dead end." Felix said tonelessly once all of us had caught up with him. He made an annoyed gesture to the high wall behind him, which had seemingly no entrance to the inside of Magma Rock.

"Did you look everywhere?" I asked plainly, knowing full well that he hadn't, for else he would have found the flame-shaped rock on a higher cliff not too far from here.

"We did, and guess what, no entrance. Thanks for making us climb up all this way." He accused. I growled lowly.

"I'd like to know your definition of 'everywhere' then. There's an entrance here and you just looked past it."

"How would you know?" Felix shot back. Finally annoyed, I ignored his question and walked over to Jenna.

"Come with me Jenna, the way to open the entrance shouldn't be too far from here, but I'll need your fire psynergy."

Not bothering to wait for her reply, I grabbed her around the waist and jumped to the top of the wall the others were waiting at. As my levitation powers slowly set me and the fire adept on the ground, my eye caught the sight of an interesting rock. It was shaped like a flame and coloured as such as well.

"That's what I was looking for." I informed the red-haired girl at my side. "Use some fire psynergy on it, that should do the trick."

"I get it…" Jenna replied. "It's the same as those rocks on the other rocks, right?"

"Seems you've got a better memory then your brother. Anyway, let's not make them wait down there too long, shall we?" Was my reply. She nodded and approached the rock, while I looked over the edge of the wall and called to the others below.

"Better take a few steps back." I warned. "A part of the wall is going to explode within a few seconds."

My warning had the desired effect and the adepts below retreated behind some rocks, while Jenna set the rock ablaze with one of her spells. The rock absorbed the energy the girl's psynergy gave it, and sent it down towards the wall. And as I predicted, a part of the wall exploded to reveal the entrance to the insides of Magma Rock.

"Nice work." I complimented the Mars adept. "Shall we return to the others?"

As soon as we were both on the ground below again, I glanced at Felix.

"Everywhere, you said?"

He growled and looked away. Isaac decided to step in.

"Let's not bicker, okay? We've found the entrance, so let's go inside. The sooner we find the core, the sooner we can leave this place. I'm melting here, so let's move on."

And with that, the conflict between me and Felix was settled. At least for me it was.

---

Let me try to describe Magma Rock's inside with a word other than 'hot'. Okay, that's impossible. Or maybe… Yeah, boring, red and… hot again would fit too. So like I said, this place was hot. It didn't bother me thanks to my new body (after all, I could walk through fire without any pain at all. Or at least, that's what I suspected), but it was still annoying and my companions were visibly suffering from the heat.

"This… this is almost as hot as the Lamakan desert." Mia panted, sweat running down her face.

"Make that worse than the Lamakan desert and I'll agree." Ivan sighed, also panting. Because of the heat, the air was heavier than usual and thus we were all breathing faster or having more trouble breathing than usual. Well, except for me again, of course. I wondered briefly if I would ever encounter something that could really overpower me. Maybe, or maybe not… If not, that would be all the better for me, I guessed.

I let Mia lean on my shoulder for support while we walked over the stone paths surrounded by searing hot lava. Ivan and Sheba were right behind us, with Garet and Jenna, who, me not counted, suffered the least of the heat, leading the way and Felix, Isaac, Piers and Kraden forming the tail of our group. The Masamune waited eagerly in my hand for the next monster to be foolish enough to appear in front of it. While my friends suffered from the heat, I considered it up to me to protect them from any possible threat. With my level of power, nothing here stood a chance, which meant our trip could be quick and we could get out of this inferno as fast as possible.

---

After playing with lava-sluice gates, striking down demons and phoenixes with the almighty Masamune and some other average stuff, the entrance to Magma Rock's core laid ahead of us. As the others marched on, I noticed a peculiar shining rock on a small ledge across the lava stream. I narrowed my eyes. I recognized that rock. If cooled, one could fetch a Magma Ball from it. And a Magma Ball was quite the ammunition for a cannon. I tapped Mia's arm. She glanced at me.

"Is something the matter Sephiroth?"

I gave her a assuring smile. "Nothing dangerous, or so I think. But I need your Douse psynergy." I explained. The others had stopped to listen now as well. I smiled innocently at them. "Just want to fetch something that could be useful for our quest." I said quickly. Nobody replied. Mia stared at me a bit, then realized that this was another one of those things I just knew. So she decided to trust me.

"You can go on ahead." She said to the group. "I'll go with Sephiroth and we'll catch up as soon as possible."

After some hesitation and an uncomfortable silence, Isaac nodded. "Okay then… Be careful Mia, and you too, Sephiroth."

I waved my hand a little bit carelessly. "Don't worry about us, we'll be back in an instance."

And when that was said, the group went on ahead, into the core of Magma Rock where the Blaze Psynergy would be learned by our female Mars Adept. I offered a hand to Mia.

"I'm going to take us there with my levitation powers. That is, if you trust me to safely carry you over the lava."

She gave me a sweet smile. "Of course I trust you." She came standing next to me and threw her arms around me. I put one arms around her shoulders firmly, while my other held the defying gravity in my body and we glided through the air, safely over the lava. In fact, I had to watch out not to hit the ceiling. Gently, my feet touched the stone floor of the ledge on which the Magma Ball laid. I released Mia and pointed to the glowing rock.

"Use Douse on that Mia, please."

She gave me a curious look. "Why is this rock so important, if I may ask?"

I grinned at her. "Let's just say it could come in handy for our journey north."

"Oh, another one of those things you mysteriously know, am I correct?" The Mercury Adept teased.

"Precisely." I smiled back. "Now please drown that rock so we can catch up with the others."

Mia didn't waste anymore time talking and cast Douse on the glowing rock. At first the water immediately evaporated by the heat, but eventually the rock began to cool down until finally, it was safe to touch it. Thanking Mia, I approached the rock, its blue, crystal-like surface forming a shell around the still glowing, molten hot core. I raised the Masamune and stroke the rock, cutting of the part containing its magma core. Pleased, I picked up the rock and turned to Mia. She tilted her head to one side, looking from the rock to me.

"I just hope it was worth the effort it took cooling that thing down." She said, slightly uncertain. I gave her an assuring nod.

"Worry not, it was." I sheathed the Masamune, wrapped my arm around Mia and held the Magma Ball in my free hand. "Now let's catch up the others."

---

Like I said, I suffered from a writer's block for this chapter. A lot of things keeping me distracted didn't help much either. The problem with this chapter was that it's still about the GS-TLA storyline, which isn't nearly as exciting for me to write as the storyline for this story after the ending of the TLA plot (yes, this story goes beyong TLA). Eventually I decided to just cut a lot of stuff from this chapter. As you may have noticed during this chapter, I really skipped very quickly through the Magma Rock part. For all those Magma Rock fans under you people, I apologize for skipping your favourite rock.

Next chapter will be the same I'm afraid. It is very possible that the next chapter will star the Doom Dragon battle from TLA, skipping the canon stuff, Mars Lighthouse, Flame Dragons and all that. Heck, I could do as much as skip right to after the TLA part of this story, but that would not be nice and I'm sure a lot of you would be dissapointed or call it lazy on my part.

I really apologize for letting this take so long. Just, I want to get done with the TLA part so badly it screws my writing mood because writing TLA chapters isn't any fun (no offence to GS TLA, I love that game). I apologize also for skipping so much in this chapter and in the next, but please find it in your heart to forgive me, for once the TLA part of this story is doen, it is very possible that you might see 2 or more updates each month! Well, if I have anybody left who cares for this fanfic, that is. Regardless of that, see you until chapter 15.