Author's Notes: This has been done for a while, but I'm kind of procrastinating on the final battle, so I figured I ought to put this up while trying to put my thoughts together. I'm aware that halfway through a chapter is probably a bad place to procrastinate, but eh.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Final Fantasy franchise
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Chapter 6: Into Myth
"Alright, everyone got all their things?" Drake patted his armor at Zidane's question, then checked that the charm added to his ribbon to suppress the Reflect spell built into it was in place and not in danger of chewing its way through the fabric. He double-checked his arrows and his bow before nodding.
Their trunks and those items they didn't want to lose were in a storage room in Daguerreo after Drake mentioned that he was pretty sure that the ship they took to fight Kuja wasn't going to make it back out with them, should they succeed in their task. The furniture had been removed as well, and was gifted to the scholars so they would have an actual place to sleep instead of hammocks wherever one could be strung up.
The Invincible felt empty, now that all the homey touches that had been added to it had been removed. The difference seemed to be making an impression on the others as well, because they all looked tense. Or perhaps it was the blue light. Drake tugged his hood up to block as much of the blue light as possible from hitting his eyes. He couldn't afford to have a migraine.
"Everyone's set." That was Dagger, grim and determined with a gold circlet on her brows. The stone that Ozma had dropped had been wrapped in wire and now hung as a pendant on her chest. Drake was pretty sure it was a pumice stone, but he had no idea whether it worked like the gemstones did or not. Dagger would know better than him, at any rate.
"Right. Let's go. To the Iifa Tree!" The hum of the Invincible's engines increased, and the familiar vertigo of lifting in the air hit Drake. He grabbed hold of the railing next to him to keep from staggering. Everyone else did the same.
Without the load of extra things that they had been carting around in the Invincible, the ship was able to make it up to speeds that they had never seen out of it before. Half an hour, and they were within sight of the Iifa Tree. More than one person had sat down to wait.
Even from the distance they were at, Drake could feel the pressure of the mana Kuja was bringing to bear to open the gate to Memoria. He blinked and then frowned at that thought. Memoria was a place, certainly, that was what had been suggested by the game, but he had thought before finding himself in Gaia that Kuja had made the place. It did make more sense that he had simply opened the gate to it, though.
"Here come the dragons." Odette's voice was tight with worry. Drake turned and frowned. The dragons were lifting up from their nests in the canopy of the Iifa Tree like a cloud of starlings. He found himself scanning for the airships he knew were supposed to be there. He had told Beatrix, so she should have spread the news of what was going to happen.
"Woah!" Zidane flinched as a dragon blew fire at the windshield. There was a ripple of some sort of magic built into the ship taking effect and deflecting the flames, but Drake frowned as there was too much fire for it to all have come from a single dragon. "What?! Where did they come from?!" Drake turned and looked, then grinned. There were the airships, rising up from the sea of Mist. Their cannons cut deep swathes through the murmuration of dragons. It took him a moment to realize that these were Lindblum's airship navy.
"Drake?" Drake glanced at Dagger and smiled sheepishly. He was probably the only one that wasn't surprised by their appearance. She sighed and shook her head, but there was a smile on her face. "I should be angry, but I'm not." She turned and looked over the airspace before blinking. "They're clearing a path for us through the dragons."
"The Invincible doesn't have a way to defend itself. I knew Kuja would take advantage of that," Drake explained, leaning forwards to rest his hands against the railing around the front of the bridge. "I'm glad my gamble in telling Beatrix paid off."
"Well, it'll make it easier to lose those dragons!" Zidane pushed the Invincible faster, but the dragon were still swarming around them. Some of them bounced off of the Invincible's hull as the Invincible pushed past them. Drake almost missed the Red Rose as it blocked the dragons that were trying to catch up to the Invincible.
"The Red Rose? Beatrix?!" Steiner sounded surprised. Drake turned away from that conversation with a smile. Steiner sounded like he wasn't sure whether to be relieved or horrified that Beatrix was there.
"Quite a woman you fell in love with!" Zidane sounded too cheerful to Zidane's ears, at least until he remembered that Zidane and Steiner had barely managed to tolerate each other for most of their adventure.
"Pah! You're one to talk!" The retort came so smoothly that Drake had to imagine Steiner hadn't thought about what he was saying before it was out of his mouth. Dagger whirled around at that, and Drake grinned.
"Wait a minute, Steiner! What did you mean by that?!" The ship swayed under them; Zidane was doing his best to lose the dragons without making any of them lose their footing. Dagger stumbled, and Drake reached out to steady her, his other hand on the railing.
"No time for arguing now!" Zidane swerved around the last of the dragons and into the glowing bubble that marked the edges of the spell Kuja had been working on. "Hang on tight!" Drake had to close his eyes and turn his head away as the nose of the Invincible broke through the bubble-like membrane of the spell and triggered a bright flash of light.
There was the sound of a spell shattering, the whoosh of air suddenly rushing into the bridge, and then Drake was knocked back, breaking his hold on Dagger. He rolled to his feet and opened his eyes, shaking his head a little at the disorientation.
A dragon stood in the center of the bridge, growling and spreading its wings as much as it could manage. Drake pulled his bow out of his pouch and backed up, letting Sabin step in front of him. He could see the others scrambling to get in position for a fight as well.
Drake was glad that he'd spent so long stringing his bow in a hurry, because he barely had to even think about getting a bowstring out and stringing his bow, or about getting a quiver out and hooking it on his belt. He just had to focus on not getting knocked around by the big angry dragon in his face. Thankfully, with several Chosen present, it seemed a little confused as to who was the biggest threat to it. That gave them all a little bit more time to get themselves in order.
"Drake, Edgar, Sabin! Keep it faced towards you!" Zidane's order got an automatic reaction from all three Caledonian natives. Drake snapped off an arrow at the dragon's head, skimming across its snout. With the fight taking place in such a small space, he couldn't really use his bow to the best extent. In this situation, he really was better at acting as a distraction. "Odette, Vivi, Freya! Hit it as hard as you can!"
Drake realized it was getting hard and harder to keep the dragon's attention on him and his blood brothers as the fight started to get going. Zidane and Amarant were scrambling over the part of it that was firmly in the bridge, and Odette and Vivi were hitting it with spell after spell. Freya and Steiner were guarding them and taking damage for them when the distraction team failed to keep its attention long enough.
Finally, the dragon slipped backwards out of the bridge, bouncing off of the hull and falling away into oblivion. Drake sighed, and looked over at Odette in time to see her pick up one of the fallen pinion feathers from the dragon and look at it thoughtfully.
A warping sound made Drake look out the newly restored windshield, and he blinked before stepping towards the broken railing. Before the ship was a tower that was building and crumbling at the same time. There parts of the building seemed to flow upwards, and the only thing that seemed solid was a road that stretched out from the tower towards them. Seeing it, Zidane directed the Invincible towards it.
"I don't like our chances of landing on that tower," Zidane explained as he settled the ship down gingerly. "As far as we know, anything that goes near it will start experiencing the same thing." Drake turned away from the windshield and blinked as the others looked at him. "Well?" Drake shrugged.
"The stories disagree about this area about everything except for the events that happen, and even those were never described in much detail." Zidane sighed at that and started for the portal down. Drake shrugged apologetically, and started for the door as well. Everyone else took that as the signal to get moving as well.
Drake was one of the last ones off, and he paused to look around the ship. Despite how the ship still made his nerves scream, it had served them well. Gaia wasn't ready to have the technology that the ship offered, though, and he was more than sure that the technology to use a soul for fuel was technology that no world needed to know of.
By the time Drake was down on the road with the others, Odette was braiding the feather she had picked up from the Nova Dragon into her braid, letting it trail along behind her. She smiled at him as he moved to stand next to her, and leaned towards him a little.
Drake looked down from the road, and realized that not only were they at the very crumbling edge of a road that looked like it had been plucked from the bridges leading to Lindblum Grand Castle, the buildings below the tower seemed to shift, flowing towards the castle to merge with it. More buildings arrived from over the horizon. There were no trees, nothing green could be seen.
"What is this place?" Zidane jumped just after he'd spoken and looked around almost frantically. Everyone looked at him, and Drake tilted his head to the side. Vivi asked him what was wrong, asking the question that was on everyone's mind. "I just heard someone call my name. But it wasn't one of you guys." Drake saw Freya glance at him and made a tiny shrugging gesture. He knew what Zidane heard, but he hadn't heard a thing.
"Maybe you're just hearing things." Zidane shook his head a little at that, frowning. Then he jumped again and looked around. "Isn't that a sign of-" She got cut off as Drake made a placating gesture at her, looking expectantly at Zidane as he listened intently.
"Garland?!" That got everyone jumping in surprise. Drake nodded to Freya as she glanced at him, confirming that this was what he had expected. Zidane frowned and shook his head, looking frustrated, and Drake had to guess that he'd just been informed that Garland was speaking solely to him. "Garland, what is this place?" Drake blinked as Zidane turned and looked at Drake, a grimace on his face. "He just told me to ask you, Drake." Drake snorted and shook his head.
"Well, that just figures. I only know this place as Memoria. I think it's someplace that is...not like any other. From what little I've been able to glean, it's a place to travel through time as well as space." Drake shrugged helplessly, grimacing. "That's literally all I can remember about it." Zidane grimaced, then tilted his head to the side.
"Wow, Garland, way to be rude. He says that Memoria is made up of our memories." Drake blinked and looked down at the road below them. So it probably wasn't just like the bridge in Lindblum, it was the bridge in Lindblum, plucked from someone's memories and placed there. "Apparently we'll 'witness the entire truth' here, whatever that means." Drake crossed his arms and glanced at Odette. She was chewing on her lower lip.
"Well, just standing here seems like a really bad idea," Odette said finally. A brick toppled from the path as if to punctuate her comment. Drake subtly took a step away from the edge. He didn't want to find out what would happen if someone fell from that height. "There's only one way to go right now, anyhow."
"Right. Let's get away from the impending problem." Dagger started to walk along the road. The rest of them started to walk as well. Drake fell in step alongside Zidane towards the rear of the group, looking anywhere but the tower. Every once in a while, he saw part of it break off at the top and bounce off the side, breaking spires that looked a little too similar to buildings he'd seen on Earth as it went.
It felt like it barely took any time at all for them to make it to the tower. Drake set the end of his bow on the ground to balance himself as he leaned back to look up at the structure that seemed to disappear into the distance now. It had to be about as wide around as all of Lindblum, and seemed to go on forever. The entrance that the road lead to stayed solid, thankfully, but several spikes reminiscent of gothic architecture were going up along the sides of the door.
They all avoided the spikes as they filed through the massive door. Interestingly enough, the inside felt more solid than the outside. The floorplan didn't look to be too practical, and after a moment, Drake swore, watching a staircase overhead detach from one landing and swing to connect to another one.
"Wh-what on earth?" Drake wasn't the only one to have noticed the moving staircase. "You weren't kidding about this place being hard to wrap the mind around," Edgar said, frowning upwards. "How did that not collapse on us? I didn't even hear any machinery working."
"I'm pretty sure that physics has ceased to care," Odette said softly. She had barely glanced up at the moving staircase, her eyes scanning the hall they had walked into. "Ah! Look!" Drake looked where she was pointing, and swore, his eyes widening. A giant decked in plate armor with a sword the size of a tree was stomping down the hall towards them.
"Vivi, Odette, that one's on you." Zidane didn't speak loudly, but the two mages nodded. Drake watched as Vivi started to whisper the words to what he thought was a Firaga spell, and Odette traced sparkling runes on the air in front of her.
Lightning cracked the air, followed closely by the roar of a large fireball. The Thundaga spell made the giant stagger, but it barely seemed to notice the fireball. Drake tapped his fingers on his bow before looking at Edgar.
"D'you think you could try the..." Drake trailed off, gesturing helplessly with his free hand. Edgar seemed to understand him anyway and looked thoughtful. He nodded slowly, and settled himself into a stance where he couldn't easily be knocked over and closed his eyes to take a deep breath.
Vivi and Odette both released more Thundaga spells, knocking the Iron Giant to its knees but not killing it. Everyone jerked as light suddenly flared next to Edgar. A woman with black hair pulled back severely stepped forwards, a couple of white feathers embedded in her bun with the ornamented hairpins. Drake's eyes dropped down to the woman's bust for a moment before he snapped his eyes back to her face.
He knew this red mage, though he knew her better as a black mage, and he knew she did not tolerate idiots easily. He also was more familiar with seeing Lulu in a black dress that was primarily composed of belts, not what was possibly a barely modified version of the Einherjar red mage uniform.
Lulu unleashed a barrage of Thundaga spells before scoffing and disappearing in a sparkle of red light. Edgar groaned a little and rubbed at his face with a grimace. The Iron Giant feel to the ground with a crash, and everyone stared at him.
"What was that?" Zidane sounded like he wasn't sure he wanted the answer to his question, and cast a couple of glances at Dagger. Drake lifted an eyebrow at that, and noticed that Zidane looked like he was blushing a little.
"That was Edgar summoning one of the Einherjar that agreed to help him. Specifically, the red mage." Drake frowned a little at Edgar and nudged him with one hand. "Hey, you need a potion or an ether?" Edgar held up two fingers and Drake nodded, pulling one out of his belt pouch. "Here."
"Thanks." Edgar gulped the ether down and shuddered at the taste. "Ngh. Okay, so, mental note. Do not summon mages of any sort unless in Trance. The energy for the magic comes from me." Drake winced a little at that. Sabin did as well.
"So that was one of the three women in your team, eh? Her personality must be ice cold if she was able to keep you from flirting," Sabin joked, offering his brother a small smile. Edgar gave him a flat look, and Drake chuckled.
"Drake was that...?" Drake looked at Odette, who was looking rather odd. He nodded, and she frowned a little. "But..." Drake tapped the side of his nose, and Odette pouted. She probably wanted to find out why a woman from Final Fantasy X was in the land of Final Fantasy IX as soon as possible.
They took a few steps, and Drake paused mid-step. He stepped over to the side of the hall and tilted his head to the side and reached into a shadowed niche. Zidane called his name, getting everyone's attention. The thing that Drake had felt rather than saw was stuck in its niche, so it took him a couple of tugs to get it free.
"Is that..." Sabin trailed off, tilting his head to the side with a distant look on his face. Finally, he grinned with a bemused smile on his face. "Well. Freya, you're in luck. You get the chance to use the lance used by Kain the Betrayer." Everyone stared at Sabin for a moment, and Drake looked over the weapon he held before offering it to Freya. She took it gingerly, running her hands over the shaft.
"It doesn't look like it's suffered any battle damage," she said finally, a frown in her voice. "You're sure it was his?" Sabin nodded at that, crossing his arms. Freya took a couple of steps away before swinging the lance, and sighed slightly. "It's wonderfully balanced."
"This place is made of memories. It makes a certain amount of sense that there would be weapons wielded in legend here." Drake looked at the weapon and shrugged again. "It also stands to reason that those weapons would still be in excellent shape." Zidane looked thoughtful at that.
"I...suppose so." Zidane sighs and started to walk forwards again. "We don't have the time to rest here, though. We need to keep going." Drake nodded to Zidane's announcement, and started to walk forwards as well. Freya swapped out her spear, handing the old one to Drake for him to stow in his belt pouch.
They passed through what looked like the pendulum part of a giant clock, and Drake paused on the spiraling stairs to watch the pendulum. He glanced down and blinked as he saw that with each pass of the pendulum, the floor far below changed.
Next came a serpentine hall lined with stained glass windows. Unlike the ones in Figaro palace, these portrayed legends. A paladin in horned armor, light emanating from the tip of his spear stood in one window. Drake realized he was the Warrior of Light, the hero from the very first Final Fantasy game. The second window was a white-haired man in a cloak with an assortment of various weapons. Written on the sill was the name 'Firion of the Wild Rose'.
The next window bore the appearance of a young boy, also with silver hair, a purple helm with an onion-like plume of feathers, and purple bloomers and cloak. He bore a sword in one hand and had a spell under his other, outstretched hand. The plaque under his window read 'Luneth the Onion Knight'.
Cecil stood in the next window, as a paladin with a dark background. The rest of the group slowed, noticing that he was absorbed in looking over the windows, and started to pay attention to them as well. Zidane walked back to look over them as well.
"Who are they?" Drake had moved on to the next window, which depicted Bartz, a brownhaired young man with a chocobo next to him. "Luneth isn't a warrior, he's a shoemaker." Zidane was frowning at that window, looking confused.
"They are the heroes of the stories told in Earth. The people that told them were about to lose everything they owned when they told the first one, so they called it Final Fantasy. It saved them from bankruptcy, so they were able to continue. The next one was called Final Fantasy Two, for the sake of simplicity, but it didn't speak of quite the same world." Drake frowned a little as he heard himself. He stepped to the next window. "There hadn't been much of a plot to speak of in the first one, but there was in the second.
"Eventually, several things seemed to emerge as a pattern. Certain creatures, both friendly and not, and different classes of warriors." Drake stared up at Terra, the green-haired woman. She was midway between her human form and her Eidolon form, power radiating from her. "Each installment changed things. The kingdoms, the maps, the very legends of the lands themselves. Sometimes the technology was advanced. Other times, it was not." Next was Cloud, the Buster sword on his back as he held out his hands to cast a spell. "For the longest time, the stories were not well known except for in the nation they were written in." Now Odette stepped forwards.
"But things changed with the seventh installment. It became well known all across the world, and ushered in an era of prosperity for them." Drake nodded, and looked at the caption. Where Bartz had been 'Bartz the Adventurer', and Terra had been 'Terra the Eidolon', Cloud's simply read 'Cloud Strife'. Just his name, not a title.
"They had the money to change how they portrayed their stories. The next installment, the eighth one, was...more realistic. Gone was the black and white of the earlier stories. The characters were able to linger in the grey between good and bad." Squall Leonhart glared over Drake's head, his gunblade in his hand. "People loved it. The people writing the stories continued." Now Drake stepped to the ninth window and looked up. "In the ninth installment, they told the story of a young man that had been raised to be a thief, in a land he was not born to." Behind him, he heard people gasp as they noticed who was in the widow.
"That's... That's me." Zidane sounded shaken." Drake nodded. "Wait, but I'm not...I'm not a Chosen, or anything important, I'm just..." Drake smiled a little at Zidane, turning to look at him.
"You are important. You aren't a Chosen, it's true, but you're a son of Terra, who is righting the wrongs committed by the people you were born to. None of this would have happened if not for you." Zidane looked blindsided. Drake turned and looked up at the window. Unlike the rest, this figure faced away from the people that looked at it, facing towards a strange shape from which light radiated. Drake knew it was the Crystal at the heart of Memoria. "Kuja would have won long ago if not for your existence, for the path you walked."
"But they didn't stop at nine." Drake turned to look at Odette. She was looking up at the tenth window, and the blonde man that was depicted in it. He bore a curious sword that looked like it was made of water. "Why?"
"I don't know." Drake walked to the eleventh window and stared at it. Shards of glass were starting to assemble themselves into its frame. "I don't think I ever will. We can't go back to Earth. We'll never know the other stories." Silence reigned for a moment.
"That's why you didn't want to tell me the name of the story." Amarant's voice broke the silence, and Drake nodded. "Because it has such a long story." Drake nodded again. He heard Freya ask Amarant a soft question, and Amarant murmured an answer.
"It is fitting, I guess, that I tell the truth about it here. Earth has a higher level of technology than Gaia does. These stories weren't told in books. They...the closest that Gaia has to it is a play, but shown on screens similar to the ones in the Invincible. They are interactive, so the people watching them can explore it with some amount of freedom. But there is a certain amount of inaccuracy. The exploration is never total." Drake turned and looked at the others. "Before Odette and I left Earth, I was about to show her the ninth one."
"The last thing that I can remember of Earth is electricity and pain. It came from the device that read the information of the stories, correct?" Odette looked to Drake, and he nodded. He took a deep breath, and forced himself to relax.
"According to Leviathan, our bodies on Earth died then. It was necessary to pull our souls to Gaia." He looked down and took a deep breath in, still feeling the ache in his chest when he thought of his family back on earth.
"And that's why you can't go back." Drake nodded, and started to walk again, noting that each of the windows had shards of glass starting to build up in them. The ones farther along didn't, but there were flecks of metal gathering to create the frames the windows would eventually sit in.
"I don't think our futures were very bright there, anyhow." Odette sounded firmer than Drake felt. When people looked to her, she had one of her swords out, her eyes focused on something. "Our fortunes weren't as good there as they have been here on Gaia." Drake turned to see what Odette had spotted and reached for his bow.
"What is that?" Eiko squeaked at the creature that roared at them from the head of the stairs. Drake idly flipped an arrow over his fingers, his eyes flicking between the three heads on the creature.
"It's called a Chimera. I've heard of them in stories from Earth. 'The head of a goat arising from the back of a lion, with a snake as its tail'... It's a curious creature, to be sure. Earth has used the word to mean any creature composed of disparate parts of multiple creatures, but this one here is the one all the rest were named after." Drake nocked the arrow he held on his bow and drew back the string to the corner of his mouth. He barely had to aim before releasing, and the head of the snake moved into the path of his arrow.
"At least it's not a sphinx." Odette groaned at that, and Drake grinned, mostly at the confused sounds the others were making as they prepared for the fight. "We'll have to tell you that story once we're out of Memoria. It's a long one." He couldn't remember the last time he felt so light. There were no secrets anymore, not even about how he had known about the events that had taken place and were going to take place.
"I'll hold you to it." Zidane spun his double-ended sword to his side as he stepped next to Drake. "Now that you've told us the rest of your secrets, you ought to be more talkative about stuff, yeah?" Drake shrugged and stepped aside to let Sabin and Edgar by.
"I can't guarantee that I'll be able to remember everything with any degree of certainty. Ancient legends from Earth weren't nearly as interesting to me as modern ones." With the snake head out of the way, it was safer for the others to get in close. No one wanted to risk getting poisoned.
The chimera didn't last long, between Freya, Amarant, and Sabin. Drake scratched the back of his head as he walked up to the corpse, lifting his eyebrows at how quickly the beast had been taken care of. If they had been in the game, he might have said they were overleveled. He glanced around in case there was another monster ready to attack him, and blinked.
"Hey Zidane, I think there's a thing over there." Zidane blinked at Drake and then looked in the direction Drake was pointing. He tilted his head to the side and walked over to one of the pillars. He grabbed hold of what looked like part of it, and gave it a few hard tugs before it came free from the pillar. He nearly fell over, and stared at the weapon.
"Well, it's pretty, at least." Zidane spun the double-sided weapon around his hands before separating them and giving them a few more swings. "Great balance. Did this ever show up in that story, Drake?" The archer nodded and looped his bow over his head and shoulder.
"Yeah. It was called The Tower." Zidane froze, and Drake tilted his head to the side. "It was described as being the weapon that defined a great thief." Odette giggled a bit, and Drake shrugged. "I seem to remember it being the name of a card from tarot cards? But I don't know much about those." Zidane frowned at the weapon before looking at Edgar.
"Keep it, Zidane. I prefer blades with a different balance than those have got." Zidane frowned, but shrugged and moved the blades he'd been wearing. The group waited for him to figure out a way to keep his new weapon on him without injuring himself.
The next area looked like one of the elevated roads from Treno, though the supports that kept those stable back in Treno were simply floating in air. After seeing that, Drake deliberately didn't look down, even as a source-less wind pushed at him, rotating a wind vane to their right.
There was a scent of brimstone that made Drake halt behind the rest of their group and look around. Freya stopped shortly after, sniffing the air with a troubled look on her face. She turned to look at Drake as the rest of the group realized that he had stopped.
A snake-like creature of blue and red dropped in front of the group, and Drake swore as he lurched forwards, tugging his bow over his head with one hand as he reached for his quiver with the other. Sabin and Edgar pulled Dagger and Eiko out of danger as Odette hastily cast protective spells, just in time to halt six swords that would have sliced into her.
Amarant lunged for the revived Fire Guardian as the rest of the group stumbled away from the towering foe. Drake paused and pulled his bowstring back. His arrow was sliced in two by one of the swords, and he grimaced.
"I am one of the Chaos guardians. Kneel before my power!" Freya moved to right next to Drake and glanced at him. He returned the glance, his jaw set. Already their friends were all arranging themselves for the battle. Odette gave him a worried look as she reached the rear line, where he and Freya were.
Steiner parried one of the snake woman's swords as Dagger called up a Protect spell around him to fend off any other strikes aimed at him. Sabin managed to scoot around their foe and grabbed hold of her tail to keep her from advancing on the rest of their group. Zidane and Edgar dodged around the rest of her swords, drawing dripping red lines on her with their blades.
Amarant ran past the chaos guardian to help Sabin keep her in place as the Figaran prince got knocked around. Freya launched herself into the air as Vivi laced a spell over Steiner's blade. Odette and Eiko joined Dagger in placing protective spells on everyone. Drake aimed an arrow at the Chaos Guardian's torso, and it struck just as Freya was landing. Another ice spell struck her, and Drake winced at her screech.
She didn't fall nearly as fast as the other monsters they had faced in Memoria so far, but she did eventually fall. The majority of the group backed up as the guardian drooped, blood dripping from her arms and torso.
"It is over...Take this!" Blue flame suddenly sprouted over all six of her swords, and she swung them down into the road at everyone's feet. Everyone yelled as the structure shook. Drake fell to one knee to keep from toppling over the edge. Odette grabbed hold of his shoulder to steady herself, her other hand holding up Eiko.
When the dust cloud from the destruction ended, there was a significant gap in the bridge. Sabin and Amarant were on the other side of it, looking a little shaken. They both looked like they had barely scrambled to safety. Drake stood carefully, looking around. He noticed a connecting walkway that he was pretty sure hadn't been there before, and followed it with his eyes.
"Zidane." The leader of their little group turned to look at Drake as he heard his name called, and blinked. "I swear that wasn't there before, but it'll connect to where Amarant and Sabin are." Sabin was scooting back from the edge, wiping a hand over his face. Amarant had already backed up and was carefully getting up.
"Right. Sabin, Amarant, stay put, we'll be over there soon." Both of the men nodded, and the rest of the group got up. Odette, Eiko, and Dagger cast heal spells on anyone that needed it. Thankfully there weren't many of their party that needed it. Drake wasn't sure if they had enough ethers if they all needed healing after every battle. At least the foes in Memoria seemed to be the loner types.
Amarant and Sabin had both used potions on themselves by the time the rest of the group got to where they were, and they continued along the pathway. Drake didn't deliberately think about how convenient it was that a new pathway had been created once the old one had been damaged beyond use. Though it did occur to him that there was some force that wanted them to stop Kuja.
As they passed through an archway, their surroundings changed. Drake wasn't sure where they were until he saw Castle Alexandria out the vaulted open windows to their left. He halted as the rest did, and scratched his head for a moment before pulling his hood up. Memoria felt a little on the cold side to him.
"Isn't this...Alexandria?" Eiko sounded just as confused as Drake felt. Odette glanced at him before looking out the windows again, her eyebrows pulled together. Drake tilted his head at her before he remembered what this 'room' of Memoria had introduced, in the game.
"What is Alexandria Castle doing here?" Most everyone jumped as the air around them seemed to change. Drake's jaw dropped as the images of Bahamut and Alexander superimposed over the castle before fading, taking the castle with it, leaving a dim grey nothingness as far as the eye could see.
"What!? What you talk about!? I not see anything!" Drake hummed thoughtfully and tapped his chin as Dagger started forwards towards the windows, tears welling up in her eyes. Zidane turned to look at Quina, frowning.
"Well, that was interesting. Garland said that Memoria is made out of our memories. Quina and Odette weren't there, so they wouldn't see Alexandria's destruction, but for me, I only saw it up until the destruction started, and then it all faded, because my eyes were injured partway through." Everyone turned to look at Drake, and he smiled sheepishly. "That was shown in the story, too, though I wasn't expecting to only see part of it." Zidane jumped and looked up to the ceiling.
"What happened ten years ago?" Drake tilted his head to the side, wondering what Garland was telling him. He glanced around before doing a double-take and walking past Dagger and Eiko to pick up a flute of gold with what looked like curving, feathered wings framing the hole that the player blew into. He offered it to Eiko, who blinked at him. Zidane looked annoyed, crossing his arm and glaring at nothing in particular.
There was no reason for them to stay in that room, so they continued on. The gravity in the next section seemed nonexistent despite it still pulling them onto the semi-ruined stairs, as there were tables, lamps, and chairs floating past them. Drake had to stop and tug Odette along when she would have stopped and stared at a book that was floating just by the door at the top of the stairs. While he was also curious about what that book said, they couldn't afford to fall behind the others.
The next room sent chills up Drake's back, but he couldn't quite put his finger on why. Odette was also looking around like she was feeling spooked, but the only ones that see anything odd about the room were Zidane and Dagger, who hunched a little.
"A storm?" Zidane flinched a little as he looked upwards, like he was protecting his eyes from the raindrops. Drake blinked, and for a brief moment, he saw the storm, and bloodstains on the stairs they were climbing. He blinked again, and everything was dry and unstained. He swallowed hard, trying to avoid drawing attention to him.
They walked through a ruined building that reminded Drake heavily of a church and over a bridge. Every once in a while, Drake could see the storm and carnage, and every once in a while, he saw Odette flinch. He gently wrapped his arm around her waist as Zidane nearly launched himself over the railing of the bridge to call a warning to someone below that no one else saw. Sabin kept him from going completely over by grabbing hold of his tail. When he was pulled back, he turned to Dagger. Drake couldn't quite hear what either of them said, but Zidane looked confused when he looked back down. All Drake could see was a dock, though when he blinked and saw the storm, he saw a boat bobbing there as well, for just a breath.
"I guess it was my imagination..." Zidane sounded confused as Drake and Odette caught up with the front of the group. Dagger turned to look at them both and then tilted her head at them, concerned, before turning back to Zidane. "Yeah, it had to be. What I just saw definitely isn't one of my memories." Zidane shook his head and looked at Drake, who shrugged. Zidane turned and started up the stairs.
"You didn't imagine that scene, Zidane." Dagger's words stopped the thief in his tracks, and he turned around again. Dagger looked up at him. "I saw it, too." Zidane blinked for a moment before tilting his head to the side.
"So that little girl was you?" Dagger nodded. "But...why was I able to see something from your memory?" Dagger shook her head, looking troubled. Drake glanced between them as Zidane tried to get Garland's attention, shouting at the sky. He didn't seem to get an answer, and he growled.
"I've been seeing only glimpses of the storm you mentioned. I think this might be a memory of Madain Sari." He glanced at Odette, who nodded, confirming that she was experiencing the same thing he was. When he looked back at Zidane, his blood brother had turned his attention from the sky to him.
"I think I know what happened ten years ago." That was Odette, hugging herself. Her eyes were troubled. "That was when Kuja attempted to pull a spirit from Earth, and got two. He'd needed to have a great deal of power to do so, power that could already call spirits of a sort." Zidane's face paled. "If he was already working to subvert Garland, it would make sense that he'd have pulled you away from Terra, Zidane." The thief took a deep breath in and sighed, shaking his head.
"I'd have been eight at the time. I was in Lindblum already, I think." The 'I think' hadn't sounded very firm. Drake shrugged and glanced at Dagger, who was looking even more concerned. "Well, whatever. We can talk about this later. We need to go stop Kuja." Drake sighed at the look on Zidane's face. He recognized it as a very determined 'not thinking about it' expression as he turned to hike up the stairs at the end of the bridge. "Woah! What is that thing?!" Everyone looked up at the end of the stairs, and Drake frowned.
"That eye...It's the same eye I saw on the night of the storm at sea." Drake glanced at Odette, who nodded. She could see it clearly as well. Zidane frowned at that, then tilted his head to the side like he was listening. His face grew even more troubled.
"What!? I don't remember ever being in a storm at sea. Or being to Madain Sari before following Eiko there." Drake tilted his head to the side at that, and then shrugged to himself. Chances were, Garland had just spoken to Zidane, using his typical cagey phrasings. "What do you mean? Can other people's memories become a part of my own?" Zidane glanced at Drake and Odette, frowning a little.
"I think the reason Odette and I have been getting flashes of what you see is because of the powers that fused the two halves of our souls together," Drake said softly. Odette nodded as well, still looking uncomfortable. "I don't think that's why you can remember, though." Zidane scowled and looked like he was listening before he shook his head with a scowl and started up the stairs again.
The rest of them followed Zidane up the stairs, though, Edgar caught up with Drake and climbed alongside him, giving him a worried look. Drake offered him a smile that felt a little too weak to be convincing. He paused and glanced back down at the rest, and blinked as he saw Amarant and Sabin arguing over a pair of claws that Drake hadn't noticed. A yell from above made him turn, and he reached for an arrow as soon as he saw the ragged looking wings. The name came to him before he even was aware that he was remembering.
"Tiamat." Drake paused for a moment to think, and then aimed his arrow high before loosing it. A few moments later, he heard the screech the new foe made as the arrow hit its mark. Odette glanced at him before building up a Fire spell. Vivi stumbled down the stairs to where they were, getting out of range.
"So, you have defeated Maliris..." The Lich's voice made them all cringe, the sound was not unlike fingernails on a chalkboard. "For Tiamat, there is only victory!" The lines of battle parted momentarily in front of Drake, and he saw their foe clearly.
Tiamat was a dragon with three heads and longer arms than Sabin and Edgar were tall, combined. Drake eyed the giant spade-shaped tail with a bit of concern. It looked long enough to reach where Drake stood. Odette backed up a little to allow Sabin and Amarant to pass by. They had split up the new pair of claws, each of them with a mismatched set.
Wind blew as Tiamat flapped its wings, and Drake crouched down to make a smaller profile for the wind to push against. Edgar did the same, not far from Drake, and then lunged in, keeping low until he needed to jump over one of Tiamat's claws. Steiner was charging in as well, and Vivi was chanting next to Drake, runes of fire burning in the air in a ring around him.
Every time Drake was about to draw his bowstring back to release an arrow, Tiamat flapped his wings to create a windstorm. He growled as his frustration mounted, and gritted his teeth, taking a deep breath through his nose to try to calm himself down. Finally, he noticed a glow around the edges of his vision and glanced down at himself. He smiled and closed his eyes, reaching for the power of Trance that was within his reach.
For the first time, he could feel the magic all around them. It took barely a moment to grasp some of it and turn it into a spell to summon his squad of Einherjar. He heard multiple people shout in surprise, and stood as the wind died around him.
Two young men whooped behind Drake, and then raced past him, Jay leaping into the air, and Vaan spinning his daggers as he dodged around the living. Each of them had a faint glow of purple around their forms. Cid the First stepped next to Drake and grinned at him before nocking an arrow to his large bow and pulling the string back.
Rocks lifted into the air. Drake glanced back and saw the dwarf geomancer creating an area for the einherjar to stand on. Penelo helped Tess onto one of the rocks before the two of them started to work on buffing the entire party. Lyn made sure that Violet and Key were safe, setting several barriers on both of them before starting a barrage of fire and ice spells on Tiamat. Zeke and Cecil jumped from stone to stone until they were at the front of the fight and worked together with Gala to batter the Chaos Guardian.
"Hallowed Father, First Sire, hear my plea, Come to our aid, O Purifier." Drake nodded to Cid as Rydia called upon Bahamut from the back of the fight, and the two archers starting up as large a rain of arrows as they could manage. Drake didn't even worry about running out of arrows, he just focused his mental efforts on keeping the thirteen warriors in the fight. He didn't even flinch as Key threw a ball of some sort that exploded on Tiamat.
The power of Trance didn't seem to last very long with the drain of keeping the Einherjar around, but they put out enough damage that Tiamat was on his last legs by the time they faded. Cid slapped Drake on the back as he faded, and Tess started to tease Lyn and Jay as the dragoon landed next to his paramour. Cecil saluted Steiner with a wry smile on his face. Gala nodded to Sabin, and they were all gone.
Odette supported Drake as he staggered, the wrist of his drawing hand moving to rest under his nose as he felt blood trickle out of it. Multiple healing spells washed over him from the three women in the group, and he accepted the ether that Freya offered him, gulping it down with a grimace.
There was a roar and a crash, and Drake looked up in time to see Tiamat topple off the stairway, taking only a few stones with him. Drake panted a bit and dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief that Odette handed him. He glanced at it and grimaced at the bright red splotches. He hated nosebleeds.
"Well, that was...interesting." Zidane sounded just as out of breath as everyone else. "You alright, Drake?" Drake hooked his bow over his shoulder and waved his hand to show he was alright, keeping the handkerchief pressed against his nose.
"Well, at least you didn't collapse," Edgar quipped, amused. Drake shot him a glare, but his grin just increased. "Figures that you would Trance on that fight, though. We couldn't keep him from messing with the wind enough for you to attack once he was aware of your presence." Drake grunted and started to climb up the stairs again.
The win seemed to ease some of the tension in the group, and many of them poked fun at each other as they climbed. Despite himself, Drake smiled a little as they walked through the shimmering illusion of a giant eye hovering in the sky.
Zidane called a halt just within the next area, and Drake sat with his back against one of the slightly pink rock walls, being careful that he wasn't sitting on rubble as he did so. He closed his eyes for a moment and checked that his nose wasn't bleeding anymore before tucking the handkerchief into his belt pouch.
"Here, Drake." Amarant passed Drake one of the cold pastries that Quina was passing out as a meal. The archer bit into it with a nod of thanks to the monk and closed his eyes again. He almost felt like his brain had been bruised by keeping the thirteen warriors in the fight, so not thinking sounded awfully nice.
He spaced out as the rest of the group chattered around him, slowly chewing the pasty that he'd received and occasionally drinking from his canteen. He pried one eye open as he felt someone dabbing at his face, and Odette blushed, caught in the act of cleaning dried blood away from his nose. She offered him the dampened handkerchief, and he gingerly wiped at his nose and upper lip.
"So you guys can do the summoning thing like Drake did?" Off towards the front of the group, Zidane was asking Edgar and Vivi about the feat Drake had just pulled off. All three of them were eating pasties as well. Drake eyed them before closing his eyes, feeling his energy wane. He fell asleep to the soft chatter, knowing that they would wake him up if they were going to start moving again.
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End Notes: I had fun thinking up more references to throw into Memoria. I'll be changing more as I go on, tweaking things that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And who knows, I may end up drawing the stained glass windows that the group saw, too, eventually.