Warning: strong sexual content and language ahead. ...Moreso than usual, I guess.
Recommended reading this round: MasterShaper's "Beasts of Gaia." It's very interesting and sorely overlooked, probably because of its unique format. One of its entries in particular inspired this chapter (heheheh), so be sure to check it out and show your appreciation... Y'all might be pleasantly surprised.
"It's dangerous outside! Kupo!"
Zidane studied the escalating passage in one of the remote corners of Gizamaluke's Grotto. He stood at the bottom and peered up through the slimy, serrated bricks and clinging vines, a dank draught playing with his hair. Freya could see by the way he scratched his chin and curled the tip of his tail that his curiosity was piqued.
"Dangerous means tough monsters to fight, right?" His question echoed narrowly to the top of the chimney-like shaft, mingling with dabbles of promising daylight.
The moogle wagged his whole body emphatically. "I wouldn't go looking for a fight up there! Kupo!" Moguta's wife chimed in with a nod, while one of her litter clung to her drooping pom-pom. "The most dangerous monsters live outside! We stay down here to keep our family safe! Kupo!"
Freya frowned, a portentously heavy humor flooding her stomach. "I would heed them, Zidane. I've never explored the area, myself, but I know of the plateau above the grotto, and it is said grand dragons lurk thereon."
"Grand dragons, eh...?" Zidane parroted with a crafty grin, making the venture sound impossibly enticing. He began to test his weight on some crude footholds. "Even better. It'll be a great chance to work on our skills."
Freya struck the ground with the butt of her lance, mindful not to impale one of the baby moogles toddling around her feet. "Are you even listening? Grand dragons are not to be trifled with! Not even a dragon knight would challenge a grand on his own. It takes a whole team of experienced hunters to bring one down!"
Zidane was halfway up and out of the moogles' den before her words finished reaching him. His voice was like a spectre calling back, "We're a team! And we're experienced! Com'on Freya, quit being a pansy and let's check it out."
"And what about your blasted chocobo??"
"We'll get 'im later! Com'on!"
"Ohh, you...!" She stamped a miffed dance on the ornate stone floor, to no avail. Warning signs such as "restricted access," "no trespassing," and even a benevolent "danger ahead" were open invitations to the impudent thief, and once he got an idea to break the rules, no measure of common sense could stop him. She drew a tempering breath and ascended the treacherous, overgrown shaft, the moogles murmuring after them.
The passage eventually gave way to a healthy, prickly forest, and as the pair hacked their way through, Freya contemplated their agenda.
A while ago it was determined that their party of eight should split up once again, each to their own pursuits. Dagger wished to go to Daguerreo, to study the library's collection of magic tomes, especially those on the subject of eidolons. Eiko begged to accompany her, suddenly showing an acute interest in the same, and she dragged Vivi by the wrist the whole way there.
Quina demanded a trip to yet another marsh (for more "training," s/he professed, though how learning to become a "super gourmand" was going to help the team was never made clear.) Accordingly, their next stop was the Forgotten Continent, where there was a short-lived debate over whom should keep an eye on the capricious Qu ("I am not babysitting the thing," Amarant had snarled as he stalked away, content to take on the monsters of the plains by himself.)
That (not really) settled, the dwindling party flew the Invincible back to the Mist Continent. Steiner expressed some latent need to check on his Pluto Knights, so dropping him off at Alexandria was in order (and for Zidane's remark that he would be "checking on Beatrix alllll niiight," the thief nearly got clobbered by the red-faced knight.)
The two remaining were at a loss over what to do. They had already scoured Lindblum the other day, there was little to do in the ruined Alexandria, and neither were particularly interested in revisiting the other cities (Freya had vowed not to return to Burmecia until her quest to vanquish Kuja was complete.) Zidane got a notion to seek out his chocobo, and though the bird's whereabouts were at the bottom of her concerns, Freya tagged along because... well, she wasn't sure. Perhaps she honestly had nothing better to do, and didn't want to be left behind--not again. Some subconscious mechanism was at work, preventing her from being left alone with her darkest, loneliest thoughts. She would have to confront such thoughts one day, she knew, but that was a day best postponed for later, when the fate of the world was not dangling by strings from a madman's fingers.
Instead, she was helping a thief look for a chocobo. Several misguided turns and a trek into the accursed grotto later ("Choco might've passed through here!") she grunted at the futility of the quest, regretting her choice of companionship. She should have followed Amarant off the ship, where at least the hardened beasts of that region would be enough to occupy her wits and strength, conversation with the antisocial bounty hunter notwithstanding. With grand dragons looming in their near future, however, she had to wonder which path was ultimately more perilous.
As if overhearing her discontent, Zidane spoke up as he chopped some thorns out of the way with his daggers. "Hey, what's up back there? You haven't said a word in like an hour. You're not really worried about the monsters, are you?"
She huffed. "One of us has to be!"
"Aw, you need to loosen up."
"And you need to get a grip. We could be ambushed by dragons any minute."
"I don't think..." Zidane paused, squinting off the wayside into some distant brush. "What the hell is that pink thing?"
"What?" A tree stood between Freya and the object of interest, so she couldn't see what was the matter. She braced for the trouble she'd been dreading since noon, her feet squared on the thin track, her lance outstretched and her ears twitching beneath her helmet.
The bushes virtually exploded and she glimpsed it: the hindquarters of a fat serpent, its scales florid pink and its tapering tail slapping the undergrowth as the creature catapulted in their direction. In the corner of her eye, Freya watched Zidane recoil with a yell more bewildered than alarmed, "How did one of those get here?!"
The instant it was upon them she saw what he meant: it was a lamia, a reclusive pond-dweller. They rarely trespassed the inhabited parts of the grotto, and even more rarely appeared in broad daylight, so to see one springing from the sunlit belly of a wood was a surprise indeed. Zidane leapt aside as it crashed through their path, a pearl-encrusted scimitar and bladed fan bared in each of its sinewy arms.
Even if it was out of its element, Freya knew what best to do with lamias, and she lunged forward, lance stabbing towards the ridged flesh of its trunk. The monster, as tall as two men and longer yet, caught the attack in its fan, the sturdy handles cinching over the dragon knight's blade. Before Freya could twist it free Zidane rebounded, a set of daggers raking the lamia's broad chin, and its wide maw split with a bellow as the monster whirled on him. Freya was locked between relinquishing her polearm and dodging the powerful tail swinging her way, and in her moment of indecision the blow overcame her like a falling tree. She was swatted away like a fly from a mule's rump, a flurry of leaves clouding her wake as she breached the trees and sailed into a grassy field. Only by the grace of her training did she keep her weapon in both hands, and it stuck into the earth like an anchor as she deftly landed around it.
"Freya!" her comrade called, and she looked up to find Zidane sprinting out of the woods, weeds and stickers clinging to his trousers and tail like a plague. One wily vine laced his boots and flung him face-first into the grass, just as the lamia barreled into view, sword flourished over the feathery plume of its head, blood streaking between the beads of its eyes and petite tusks bared with the berserked shriek of a harpy.
Freya picked her lance out of the dirt and jumped high and hard, using the clearing to her aerial advantage. She was over the tree line and honing in on the lamia when she noticed Zidane with his daggers, up again and ready to meet the monster. At his advance, however, the lamia halted, sword tucked back and fan sweeping ahead like a shield. As Freya fell closer and saw the blades of the fan ignite with rose-colored flame, she realized it wasn't defending itself; it was casting a spell.
It was too quick and too late to warn anybody, however, and the last Freya saw before her lance was driven through the monster's jugular was Zidane getting knocked down by a ball of hot pink light. She tore away from the impact, the lamia's phlegm and purple blood sluicing over her legs, and stood back to take in the lay of the battle.
"Grrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeecch!!" the skies erupted. It was only long enough for Freya to blink and they appeared, diving out of the clouds like hawks bound for hell, lightning coursing around their iridescent hides and emerald scales. Three dragons large enough to play football with an air cab descended on the lamia in its final throes, crushing its ribcage under their plummeting girths. Freya observed with amazement and horror as one of them closed its jaws around the lamia's head and plucked it off its shoulders like a turnip. Ugly, squelchy, crunchy noises ensued as they began to squabble over the carcass.
As soon as she recovered from the appearance of not only one, but three grand dragons, Freya swept her gaze over the plains in hopes of pinpointing a place to hide before any of them realized she was there. A rocky outcropping was found within dashing distance, but before she started taking cover a second thought flashed to mind: where was Zidane?
She crawled through the tall grass, arrowing towards his last location, and nearly tripped over the boy before she discovered him properly. "Zidane!" she rasped, nudging his shoulder, and immediately Freya got the impression that something was... not right.
He wasn't moving, but he wasn't unconscious. He sat on his hands and knees, head bowed into the dirt, and refused to acknowledge his friend, much less the feasting thunder-monsters directly ahead. Freya scanned the vicinity for traces of the spell that hit him, but there wasn't even a shard of grass bent the wrong way, much less burnt, and she couldn't smell the typical coppery odor of offensive magic. She yanked him upright by the arm, but was dismayed when Zidane simply flopped the other way, turning a crossed, glossy-eyed look to the sky. His breath was short, his face was flushed and he was mumbling like a drunken dog--simply put, he looked confused, in the official sense.
"Gods damn it," she cursed, realizing he wasn't fit to go anywhere. She resolved to carry the bedazzled boy, hefting him onto her shoulders and taking off towards the rocks. Unfortunately, this maneuver was at the cost of stealth, and she hadn't made three steps towards shelter when the air cracked with a roar. A backwards glance confirmed her fears: one of the dragons was lowering a look straight at her, and the others swiftly caught wind of their new prey, rising to the chase.
"Oh gods!" She sped away, struggling with her inert burden as the earth started to quake beneath the tread of three hungry dragons. Their fuming, noxious breath was licking her heels as she cleared the grass and hurdled over the granite shelf, landing in an open niche before another valley filled with grass and flowers. She pressed fast to the rock wall, praying to disappear from sight, but the gods' answer was dropped in front of her, equipped with mammoth teeth and talons.
The first grand dragon screamed in her face, the sheer sound enough to paralyze lesser creatures, and Freya scrambled out of the way of the slashing attack that followed. She wormed along the corners of boulders, seeking a foxhole, and was rewarded with a crevasse just wide and deep enough for a couple of people. Without another thought she slung Zidane through the gap and then plunged in after him, the other dragons hounding her shadow. There was a crescendo of stomping and thundering as the monsters strove to dig them out with claws and electric bolts, but the crescent roof of the hole-in-the-rock deflected their assault.
Eventually the frustrated roars and thunder spells simmered down, the siege settled into an uneasy standstill, and Freya at last remembered to breathe. It took a minute to piece together her bearings, upside-down and crammed between jagged rocks as she was, and her heart was still racing as she squirmed and shoved her way to a reasonable position.
It was a terrible spot; there was no room to swing her polearm or even lie down flat, and just a few feet above was a slit that exposed the sky and some snooping dragon snouts. Zidane was slouched against the other side of their cubby hole, looking ruffled and out of breath, even though she was the one who had just done all the running.
"Gods, what now?" Freya breathed, though at the rate the fates were blessing her today, she wondered why she bothered asking them.
Her companion began to stir, blinking bleary, unfocused eyes while dregs of words spilled off his daft tongue. "Mmugh... mmehn..."
Freya frowned and held a steadying hand to his neck. His pulse was wild. She considered the spell that struck him, drawing from her limited knowledge of the monsters under Master Gizamaluke's charge. There was something unique about lamias, she was warned ages ago, though what was it, again...?
"Muhnuh... mma... auhm..." Her touch seemed to revitalize him, and Zidane shuffled closer, pawing at the clasps of her raincoat and burying his face in her shoulder. Before Freya knew how to object, he wrapped his legs around hers and began to smother her with an unexpected rush of vigor, his panting taking on a thick, sultry edge. "Ah... ah..."
"What in...?" Freya muttered, almost as disoriented as he, and the more she tried to guess what the Genome was aiming for, the less she liked the answer. The heated contact rose to a steady rhythm, his hips rocking against hers, and once Freya realized that the thing poking her thigh was definitely not one of his daggers, her fur bristled savagely.
"Ugh! Get off!!" She cuffed him on the ear with an open hand.
Zidane fell back, knocking his head on the rocks, and the boy clutched his hair in muddled pain. "Ah! Argh... ugh?"
"What?" Freya spat, losing patience with his dumb manner. "Say something intelligent!"
He looked up, cloudy expression finally evaporating, though the feverish glaze to his eyes lingered. "...Freya?" he squeaked, as if only now noticing her.
"Yes, you fool! What are you doing??" she reproached him, breathless with outrage.
"Erm... ah? I dun... uh?" He furrowed his brow, helplessly stuck and stumped, and though all his blundering preached innocent confusion, Freya noticed the unsubtle hand reaching under his belt, as if of its own accord.
She shook him aggressively. "Hello?? What's gotten into you?!"
"Ah, ahh!" He threw both hands up in surrender. After several slow blinks, an actual sentence congealed. "Er... you tell me. I don't know, I... last I remember was that lamia, and then... ohh..." He doubled over with a groan. "Oh gods... I'm so hard I can't think straight."
"What??" Freya squawked, torn between not hearing correctly and not wanting to hear correctly. Suddenly his condition made terrible sense, and though she long forgot the technical name of the spell, Freya knew what poets and other writers with sick senses of humor called it. "Oh for the love of--it's an eros spell!"
"A whuh?"
"It's a special ability of the lamias. It overwhelms weak-minded males like you, and turns them into sex-addled loons. Since you're already a pubescent moron, it just made a pre-existing condition worse."
"Bwuh??"
"Exactly." She offered her hands to the heavens, exasperated. "Great, and now I'm pinned in this gods-forsaken gopher hole with you."
"Uhm... cure?" he feebly entreated.
"There isn't one. It lasts until either you come to your senses or..." Freya's ear twitched irritably at the alternative. "Well the other option isn't happening, so you'd better snap out of it before I knock it out of you."
Zidane seemed to take her threat seriously enough, dragging himself back to an upright position and inching as far away from the dragon knight as possible. "So what are we... doing here?" the flustered teenager eventually had the mind to ask.
She glowered and uttered succinctly, "Grand dragons."
His eyes widened anxiously. "Where??"
Freya pointed to their skylight, and Zidane warily stood up and climbed to the top of the hole, peering over the brim. With a yelp he dropped from the perch and covered his head, a set of eager claws chasing him down. They cowered together until the dragon resigned its post with a snort, retreating back to watchful obscurity.
Zidane's whisper was saturated with awe. "...There're grand dragons up there!"
She could have slapped him. "Thank you, Captain of the Obvious. That's what I just said!"
"Geez, I didn't expect it to be like this!"
She wasn't sure if he was referring to a minute ago or an hour ago, but her resentment was well placed either way. "When I said there are grand dragons up here, what in the six blue hells did you expect?!"
He shrugged defensively. "I dunno! I was thinking like, we would run around until we found one, and then we'd kill it, and then we'd go find another one, and then we'd kill it! I thought they were supposed to be solitary monsters, like big cats or something! I didn't think a whole goddamn pack--flock--whatever of them would swoop down on us!"
"What did you think, they were all just going to line up one at a time for the slaughter?! You are an impeccable idiot."
His face screwed up in a childish scowl. "Yeah well who's stupider, the idiot or the idiot who follows the first idiot without saying anything?"
Freya reared onto her haunches, raising her voice with her temper. "I did say--"
A lightning bolt broke her rebuttal, sending the dragon knight squealing and scuffling to the bottom of the hollow. The spell showered the two with sparks and dust as it uselessly skittered overhead, the scouring noise mingling with the growls of their stalkers.
While Freya's ears were still ringing, Zidane said brashly, "Aw, we can handle it! There's only three of 'em. One for each of us, and one to grow on."
"Oh shut up, you simpleton," she snapped, thundered into fetal submission. "We don't stand a chance."
The two stewed in that cold fact for several minutes, neither daring another peek outside. Freya wrinkled her nose with another dismal thought. "Grand dragon venom is notoriously lethal. We're lucky they aren't using their poisonous breath to choke us to death."
"They're probably smarter than that," the body squished beside her reasoned. "They wanna flush us out before they kill and eat us."
"Wonderful," she said, watching a pebble dribble off the nose of her helmet.
---
The hours stretched uncomfortably underground. The stone walls were numbingly hard, her death-stained stockings were turning sour, her side felt bruised and raw, and by the time violet hues began to tinge the blue sky, her legs and hips were tired of propping up her body. There was nowhere in the steep, wedged crawlspace to actually sit down, and the dragons relentlessly patrolled the entrance, their grizzly murmurs and shuffling footsteps tolling bells to the Burmecian's sensitive ears. An impatient thunder spell would once in a while rattle their cage, just when Freya was on the verge of dozing off, so even that slight reprieve was denied her. If she was going to be imprisoned like this much longer, she thought bitterly, she might give up and throw herself into the reaper's maw--at least the dragons her clan so worshipped would get some satisfaction from it.
Zidane hardly weathered any better. Usually he was a wellspring of crazy ideas and escape plans, even if half of them wouldn't work in a million years, but now he was disconcertingly withdrawn. He would occasionally shift from one slippery stance to another with a plaintive little noise, his breath going in fits and shudders. Freya couldn't tell if he was sick or sorry, though she gave him the benefit of the doubt and refrained from smacking his fidgeting hands away from his waistband.
The silence was eventually broken by his strange, low, creaking voice. "Mmm... Say, while we're stuck down here..." His fingertips trailed past her knee and up her leg, teasing the muscular cords beneath, and Freya was put off by his dopey, half-lidded smile. "...You wanna fool around?"
She seized his wayward hand, about to break it at the wrist. "How could you possibly be up for that nonsense at a time like this? You are despicable."
Zidane lolled back with a tremulous sigh. "I dunno, I just... ever since that lamia hit me with that thing, I don't feel right. It stinks, we're starving, we've been cramped in here for hours, and I am miserably horny. If I could get at least one thing off my plate, that would be awesome."
"Is this how you sweet-talk all the ladies?" she censured him.
He wouldn't look at her straight, and it was the foggy, bewitched film over his eyes that worried and infuriated her the most. "Aww... Com'on Freya, be a pal. Help a guy out."
"Friends don't ask for such favors!"
"Sex buddies do," he naturally retorted.
"For Reis's sake, no!" she railed at him, fed up with the entire predicament. "I don't care what that lamia did to you, I am not helping you gratify your perverse little itch. Don't you dare think for a second that I'm not injured and miserable myself, you selfish, obstinate, foolhardy, incorrigible, pumpkin-headed little lech! If not for you we wouldn't be stuck in here! I have no sympathy what-so-ever." She pounded the opposite wall with her fist, punctuating the rant, and Zidane sank even further into the crevasse.
After an abashed while the boy spoke again, indignantly, "...I have a pumpkin head?"
She turned a mean lip up and away from him. Maybe the pumpkin part was a bit much--but she meant the rest, and she wasn't about to take any of it back.
Zidane cast a gloomy look at his crotch, slander already forgotten. "Can I at least give myself a hand?"
She scoffed. "Directly in my presence? I think not. You've some gall, even asking."
He whimpered and went back to picking thorns and stickers out of his clothes, while Freya went back to brooding and listening to the dragons. They were restless, the swish of grass and crunch of gravel marking their obvious prowling. Curse them, what was the point of their tireless menacing?? If they were truly hungry, they could have rounded up a plethora of other creatures to eat in the time they've wasted camping some rocky burrow. Surely a scrawny, armor-clad piece of meat such as herself couldn't be that appetizing.
She knew not the motives of grand dragons, however, and even if they were simply the subjects of a cat's game, it made no difference. The dragons proved they weren't going to lose interest any time soon, and there was nothing the cornered dragon knight could do.
"Freeeeeya..." And Zidane was not helping.
"What?"
"Please..."
"Please what??" she replied testily.
"You know..." The lewd quirk of his eyebrows left little question of his intent.
"I already said no! Are you deaf or stupid?!"
"I gave you time to reconsider."
"Reconsider this, you...!" She thrust her heel remorselessly into his groin, but enough of his reflexes were intact to block it, so she settled for generally battering him until he cried mercy.
"Ow, ah, okay, gods, never mind, I'll stop!"
Freya pulled back, waiting for an apology, and he shrugged through it, voice hoarse with desperation. "I'm sorry, it's just, you know, I'm dyin' here. It's never felt this bad before."
"Irony hurts, doesn't it?" she belted back, not in a gracious mood.
Zidane narrowed a look at her that was probably meant to be pointed, but in his disheveled state it only made him look queasy. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," she smartly dressed him down. "I just think it's appropriate for someone who thinks of virtually nothing but sex to get a taste of his own medicine, for a change."
This finally struck a nerve in the single-minded boy, and his features sharpened to an acerbic glare. "You think I deserve this?? I am laughing all the way to the morgue, let me tell you!"
"Well good," she fired back, duly belligerent, "Because that's exactly where we're headed now, no thanks to you!"
"Yeah, well... fine!" The master of non-sequitur crossed his arms and threw his gaze into a corner.
"Fine." Freya likewise shut him out.
They sulked while daylight slipped away and stars sprinkled the greater moon's palette of soporific blues, like metallic paint on the canvas of the gods. The two did an impressive job of sitting at odds, considering there was barely enough room to turn their backs. They waited for the night's chill to set in and discourage their pursuers, but the dragons remained constantly within earshot. Though Freya could discern snoring from the beasts, the last time she surfaced to investigate, it was merely a ruse. If the dragon knight weren't as agile as the namesake, she would have lost her head.
As it happened, Freya had nothing left but time to think.
If it was going to boil down to a contest of patience, stamina, reflexes or even hunger, the dragons were going to win, she was certain. The whelps of the basin could reportedly survive for weeks without nourishment and stay alert for days on end; in the case of adult grand dragons, those figures could be amplified threefold. Freya, on the other hand, hardly believed she could last another day, and even if she could, it was a not a limit she wanted to put to the test. If there was a way to distract the fiends long enough to run across the plains, through the woods and back to the grotto without them catching up, she wished she could devise it. Challenging them directly was inconceivable; despite Zidane's boasting, they weren't skilled enough to slay three of the monsters at once, and Freya had severe reservations about defeating even one. If only the others were here...
As the minutes and hours whittled away, the final recourse was the first and last thing on her mind since the whole ordeal began: death.
Did she want to die here? Of course not. She would sooner fight and face the inevitable than waste away in a hole. A dragon knight knew how to meet one's fate with honor, if nothing else. It would be a terrible shame, still, to perish on some uninhabited plateau while the rest of her comrades awaited her return--more practically speaking, she and Zidane were the ones last piloting their airship. If something happened to them, the others would be virtually stranded. She couldn't afford to let them down, not when the war between their worlds was finally nearing its climax.
However... if she were to die here, she wouldn't want a grudge to follow, not even on the one largely responsible for her demise. Besides, after getting mired in such bleak thoughts, any conversation at all would have been preferable to the oppressive silence she was enduring now.
"Zidane... Are you awake?" It was a lame query; he was right in front of her, and though his eyes were closed in the slanted moonlight, his squirming and irregular breathing indicated he was far from rest. He answered like a sick cow, with a strangled groan that died on a pitiful note, and she arched her brow, wondering.
Was that some kind of joke? Was he brushing her off? There was no way he was still sweltering under that eros spell... right? That happened just after lunch, which was what, seven, eight hours ago? Maybe more. That was surely enough time to work it out of his system (even if she wouldn't let him do it manually.) Was it something else, then? They were both beyond uncomfortable, but was he seriously hurt, or just being melodramatic?
There was only one way to find out. "Are you still...?" she pried, unable to finish the question without a disgusted grimace.
"Yes," he said raggedly, loudly and with absolutely no hesitation. His voice was cracked, bordering on pain, and he wouldn't yet look at her or even open his eyes. Freya got the impression that if he did, she would see the lamia's tears.
Though she was loath to touch him again, she reached over and checked his pulse once more. "Tch, you're sweating like a hog!" was her only remarkable observation.
"Y-Yeah." His skin was teeming with unnatural fire, and he could scarcely hold enough breath to speak; he seemed legitimately ill. She had no idea a spell like that could be so potent, but then again, the lamia itself was extraordinarily for its kind.
Freya gave a smoldering sigh, shaking her head at the sadistic fates. She was vexed with the boy, sure, but she wasn't heartless. She couldn't let him suffer the whole night.
Ultimately, it was too damn late and she was too damn tired to quibble over such things as dignity and decency.
"Oh, fuck it."
"Wha-?" She could imagine Zidane's astonishment. Though she was adept at cursing him, cursing outright was a rare and drastic feat of her character. Profanity was typically beneath her tastes, but there was nothing appropriate about what she was about to unleash, anyway.
"Do whatever you have to do," she tersely expounded, "Just don't touch me with it, you understand?"
Zidane spent three whole seconds regarding her with the most bemused expression she had ever seen on a human being, and then without another word he got up and busy. He clambered for a stance that would face away from her, yet the best he could manage was leaning his back against her arm. She shut her eyes, grit her teeth and endured him, so long as he kept his hands to himself.
This he did well, belt falling slack at his side in a hurry, and for a minute all she could hear was hitched, labored respiration and the rustle of clothing. He then fell into the habitual motions, and even through their layers of clothes she could feel tense, shifting muscles all the way up his spine. What Freya didn't anticipate, however, was the furry, rogue tendril slipping under her coat and wrapping thrice around her thigh, too delicate to notice amidst all the heat and friction.
She could tell when he reached his peak by his high, hiccupping cry and his tail's abrupt constriction, strong enough to make her yelp. She hissed and pushed aside the skirt of her coat, uncovering the intruder. "Zidane, your godsdamn tail!"
The boy was a little too far gone to catch her meaning right away. He slid away and hugged the wall, drinking long, sated breaths and fumbling absent-mindedly with his belt. It gradually occurred to him to wipe his hand on a nearby rock. "Uhm... uh?"
"Your tail," she clarified sternly. "Get it off before I cut it off."
He twisted a glance her way and grinned sheepishly, a blush coloring his complexion brightly enough to be evident in the cool light. "...Heh. Has a mind of its own." He released her leg, the fuzzy coils unraveling like rope.
She clucked dismissively. "Anyway, are you quite done?"
His answer wasn't encouraging, nor the way he wouldn't quit rummaging through his trousers. "Ah, I... I think so... Argh..." He passed her a strained look. "Hand me a potion, will ya?"
She lifted a skeptical eyebrow and reached into the pouch at her side, producing a small vial. "You really think drinking a potion will help?"
"Who said anything about drinking it?"
"What are you--?" He snatched the potion and unceremoniously poured it down the front of his pants. "Oh for gods' sake, Zidane!"
"Oh yeah..." he purred, slumping into a corner. "That hits the spot."
"You sick little..." She gruffly took back the empty vial and stared critically at his shadow-rumpled figure. The wasted potion left a damp, reddish, trailing blot on the blue fabric around his legs. "Congratulations. You look like you just bloody soiled yourself."
"Don't give a crap, my lady," he quipped haughtily.
Freya resignedly threw the vial down a crack in the rock and reclined on her elbows. "Tch, men. I swear, it's as if you are all incapable of surviving without sex."
"I think we are!" he concurred.
"Well, I'm glad you're happy. We're still going to die horribly down here, you realize," she flatly remarked.
"Mmm-hmm." Zidane stretched his arms over his head and yawned. "You should relax, babe. We're gonna be here a while."
"The nerve of you!" she sniffed, but Freya was too relieved to hear the usual pitch in his voice to take any further umbrage.
One of the dragons sneezed, a ghastly reminder, and they ran out of things to say. Another hour passed in silence, though this one was slightly more accommodating than the last. Freya caught herself trembling at the joints, though whether it was from the creeping cold, the marathon of holding herself up, or stress in general, she could not ascertain.
'Fratley, if I don't make it out of this...' She sighed again, her eyes stinging with hopelessness.
The defeated little sound stirred her companion. "Oh, hey..." Zidane wiggled closer, reaching around her shoulder. Before she knew better, she was draped in a lazy hug. "Thanks," he murmured drowsily under her ear, and proceeded to fall asleep in her lap.
"Hey!" she protested, albeit solely for the sake of it, as she lacked the willpower to push him away. Even though he reeked of sweat, half-baked sex and spilled potion, he was warm and soft enough to make an alluring pillow, and Freya was just desperate enough to take advantage of that. She passed her weight from the wall to the boy, returning the gesture, and her legs throbbed and tingled gratefully for the chance to relax. Once she finally let go and leaned on him, it was easy to... to...
"Hey, you can't just... go to sleep on..."
Freya dozed off.
---
The gods only knew how long she was asleep, but the night was ripe when the dragons made their move. The pair awoke to some scratchy, muttering commotion overhead, the monsters' star-glittered silhouettes peeling across their narrow window. Freya watched them crowd overhead and grumble in odd, particular tones, almost like speech. Then one of the lot squatted over the hole, its bulk obscuring the moon and shrouding the two in darkness.
Zidane's brow furrowed with consternation. "What are they doing...?"
Freya couldn't say, but the shadowy pall was stifling already, a heady, mildew-like scent permeating her nostrils. Did the dragons mean to suffocate them, or...?
She just got the mind to take her lance and thrust it straight up into the overhanging brute when it crashed on their heads like a sack of bricks: a gyser of scalding fluid, so hard, fast and pervasive that the two were flattened against the walls of the fissure like wet socks, stunned. The torrent lasted for nearly half a minute, and Freya was positive they were both going to drown, but it finally trickled to a stop, the dragon lifting up and away.
Freya opened her senses, gasping and gawking in the steaming dark. They were now steeped in some kind of... warm liquid... that wasn't apparently caustic… but it rather smelled, reeked, stank of--
"Sons of bitches pissed on us!!" Zidane screamed, and when this realization struck Freya a second later, she realized exactly which end of the dragon she was about to stab. She was frozen, sputtering in shock. It was piss. It was vile, gross, rotten, humiliating, abominable, and all over her, seeping through her clothes and matting her fur with the worst filth she could imagine. The fumes alone were nauseating--never, ever in her life...
"Oh, that is it," her companion snarled wrathfully, a crazed expression carved on his face and a thread of spectral fire dancing on flourishing hackles. There was a burst of bright, raw, unfettered magic and it was that simple: he Tranced.
Freya had witnessed Trance transform her friends in amazing ways. Dagger became a golden goddess. Eiko became an angel. Amarant became a figment of the dark.
Zidane became a beast. She had seen his Trance before, but never in such close quarters. He was usually a fleeting blur on the battlefield, his arsenal of bizarre spells eclipsing his transfigured form, but now she could make out the tufts of electric pink fur that swallowed his garments and framed his visage with a burning lion's mane. He had gnarled, clawed hands and slitted eyes cut from sapphires and boiled in brimstone. His every hair and curve was wicked and primal, tail thrashing like a torama's whisker, breath seething through pointed teeth and small chest heaving with rage.
When he spoke, she couldn't even hear Zidane--his voice was demonically distorted, as if the boy she knew were shouting from the back of a line of bloodthirsty panthers. "I don't know about you, but I'm ready to get out of here."
Freya raised her hand automatically, seeking her polearm, and that was when she noticed the ethereal smoke wafting off her knuckles. She waved her arm experimentally, watching it leave a hazy after-image, and when she grasped that sparkling sensation in her gut, the power of her very soul engulfed her. The light was exhilarating, opiating, new and ancient and surreal--bone turned to flesh, turned to skin, turned to fur, turned to scales, turned to horns and claws and back again. She knew this light, alien to her waking hours and yet familiar to her dreams, as if it were her bedfellow all along.
She didn't know what she was now, but she was Tranced, and that knowledge was good enough.
Zidane grinned like a devil, and Freya nodded back. They were going to hurt some dragons. "...Let's go."
---
Moguta, Mogmi and their litter of moogles were roused from their beds early that morning. The babies gathered around the chimney of their makeshift dwelling, their tiny, squinty eyes monitoring the soot-covered shape lumbering down the shaft. While they speculated over whether it was man, moogle or beast, the parents fretted and listened closely to the anomaly's encroaching utterances.
The first distinct sentence to reach them was, "This has been the most disgusting experience of my life. We are never speaking of it again, do you hear me?"
The moogle couple exchanged perplexed shrugs, and their children shrieked and tumbled out of the way as the mystery guest leapt down to the floor, its surprisingly nimble legs absorbing the shock with nary a sound. It rose unsteadily and trudged forward, a spindly-limbed, blonde-haired bundle hanging off its shoulders.
Moguta bounced on his knobbed feet, suddenly recognizing the pair. "Oh, oh, oh, you're those crazy people from yesterday! You're alive! Kupo!"
Mogmi gasped at the wretched sight they made. "Goodness, what happened? Are you two all right?"
The dragon knight's hands and frazzled hair were dyed a shade to match her tattered red coat, and she puffed and spit as she dumped her witless luggage onto one of the straw mats in the corner. The blonde boy lay there in a comatose heap, smeared with a jungle's worth of dirt and scratches.
Freya stood by him for a moment, swaying on her feet, before finally dredging up some words for the moogles. "We're fine. Just exhausted."
Mogmi flitted around the room, herding her scattered children away from the visitors. "From what?"
"Trance."
Mogmi seemed impressed. "Kupo! Are you serious? How did that happen?" Moguta pinched the shiny bulb of his nose. "And what's that awful smell??"
"Grand dragon urine."
The moogles were fazed to silence. Freya bowed towards the ground with a wry smirk, unsure if she was going to laugh because she was funny, they were funny, or she was just mad.
"I believe that answers both questions. Now, if you'll excuse me... I shall be joining him."
Gravity answered for her. She collapsed on the spot and didn't wake up until the next day.
---
"Uh, Freya... You're not gonna want to hear this..."
"What?"
"We've gotta go back up there."
"What for??"
"...I left my daggers."
A/N: Phew, that was a doozy. Anyway, as a reward(?) for making it to the end of this chapter, here's some bonus material! Brought to you by #icybrian.
Myshu: Do you think FF healing potions taste good or bitter? Also would it feel good or burn like mineral ice if poured on one's penis?
Myshu: (this is relevant I swear?)
Angahith: I assume it might feel good, in a tingly way!
Mozz: medicine always tastes like shit
Mozz: i would imagine anything as miraculously powerful as potions seem to be
Mozz: would have to taste particularly nasty
Hermit: I think the weaker ones are probably flavored like cough syrup
Hermit: and like elixirs would go down like burning tar
Mozz: i'm also imagining would sting like a motherfucker if applied locally
Mozz: but it would of course mend the flesh it was stinging the fuck out of
Mozz: so it'd be like bacardi 151 going down the throat and iodine if splashed on the skin
Mozz: is basically what i'm sayin.
Myshu: Very astute observations, chat
* Myshu notes
Hermit: Not sure about like, the status cures and such
Hermit: at least the stuff that one assumes would be ingested
Hermit: Lesson one in Balamb Kindergarten: Don't eat Gold Needles.
Mozz: Gold Needles are applied anally
Mozz: it's very inconvenient
Mozz: but then, so is being turned to stone.
Hermit: Oh man now I'm wondering if like cure potions have to be applied as enemas
Angahith: I bet they have to, in SOME fics
* Angahith shifty eyes Myshu
Myshu: grk
Myshu: NO medical anal
Angahith: (it's an open secret you like buttsex) :(
Mozz: Cloud "cures" Cid of Petrification status. oneshot R&R plz no flamz
Donraj: Some D&D novels actually go into this!
Donraj: (It varies)
Donraj: I think my favorite take is "Tastes good, healing process is incredibly painful"
Myshu: Och