Chapter Thirty-five: Angels of Vengeance; Saints of Salvation
'May I ask, who are you? An angel of vengeance, or perchance a saint of salvation?'
For the rational mind a sense of grievance and loathing can only take a soul not wedded irrevocably to hate and madness so far when it comes time to kill a man.
Vayne Solidor for all that he was tyrant and megalomaniac, was also, tragically, still a man.
A man who fought with fists and feet alone against a barrage of edged weapons and bullets.
Balthier, who had never met the Emperor five years his senior, in the flesh, found he lacked the mindless bloodlust that seemed to keep Vaan hacking at the elder Solidor, or the burgeoning sense of moral superiority that enabled little lord Larsa to slash at his brother's exposed back with tapered blade.
'You hesitate.'
Fran came to his side, her willowy lithe frame haloed in magicakal healing fire.
' I've had my fill of this.'
Balthier forced magicks to his own hands to cast a hastening spell on Vaan; needs must and it was better to have this bitter business over with quickly.
' We make an end today, one way or the other.'
Balthier almost laughed, ' Cheerful as ever Fran.'
Balthier watched Vayne unleash a vicious barrage of kicks and punches towards the Princess, Basch, ever-faithful, leapt into Vayne's path to protect his queen.
Whispering the incantation Balthier threw an arm out towards the fight, he sent the Scourge wave towards Vayne and watched it stagger the man into the waiting, eager blades of his brother and Vaan.
'Gods above but I'm sick of this.'
Balthier growled as he and the rest of the party watched Vayne Solidor stop being a Hume, and become a monster, thickened and maligned by the Mist that pulsed in his raised and blackened veins, his eyes wild.
' Easier it is to cut down a monster in his agonies than a man in his pride.'
Fran swung her sword towards one of the glowing Sephira blades, spiritual manifestation of Vayne's vaulting ambition, Balthier caught the twisting airborne blade with Deathbringer as it raced towards it master.
' Easy is relative Fran.'
Balthier rejoined as he picked himself up from on top of her, having caught the sight of the Sephira racing for her momentarily exposed back and knocked her to the floor.
The partners were forced apart as the fight progressed. Fran hastened to Penelo and the Knigts side, Balthier to Vaan and the Princess.
Ashe was bleeding across her right flank where one of the Sephira had caught her with her guard down.
Balthier on closer inspection of the wound could see pink purplish muscle through the tatters of her clothing.
For some reason best known to herself; Ashe had favoured Perseus Bow for the final encounter. Affording her no shield to protect herself with.
Balthier had not been aware she could use a bow, least of all one that was double her size.
The parallels his mind drew between Ashe and Fran, as the Princess, bloody and pale loosed arrow after arrow straight for Vayne, unnerved Balthier.
'Vaan!' Balthier shouted above the din of Mist, Magick and palpable rage towards the would-be pirate.
Vaan turned from the blow that felled the penultimate Sephira, blood covered his unfinished, boyish features and sweat and viscera slicked his bare forearms.
' Take a leaf out of Reddas' book.' Balthier threw his Deathbringer to Vaan who grinned ferociously as he caught the sword.
The final Sephira speared towards Vaan, slicing the blood soaked air and leaving a vapour trail of Mist in its wake. Vaan stood tall and undaunted as it approached him.
With a wordless cry the boy raised Deathbringer to deflect the Sephira's dive for his heart and one handed swung the great sword Save the Queen to shatter Vayne's last remaining helpmeet.
All the while Balthier had been supporting Ashe's weight in his arms, her Bow clutched in trembling hands as blood loss took its tool on her.
Sweat damped her pale hair to her forehead as Balthier let healing magick course through his blood stream and down into his hands which held Ashe by her delicate waist.
'I must fight on.'
Ashe panted letting go of the bow with one hand and using that hand to clutch at the hem of Balthier's vest to keep herself upright.
'Almost done, Princess.' Balthier murmured.
He doubted Ashe had any idea how badly she'd been cut up, flesh ripped down to bone, sinew and muscle.
Fran, Basch, Vaan and the deranged Kingslayer Gabranth had Vayne surrounded but no one thought the monster beaten, a cornered beast is the most deadly of all.
Penelo, Balthier's Arcturus strapped to her back, crouched protectively over the fallen Larsa, helping him come slowly round to consciousness.
A lovely awakening the young lordling would have, Balthier thought with some sympathy, watching his elder brother slain.
Ashe was shifting in his arms, slowly, breath hitching with pain as Balthier kept his hands to her flesh which knitted back together as he held her, her blood a hot wash over his wrists.
' I have a clean shot.'
Ashe fumbled the Bow into position, bracing the monstrous weapon on the floor and pressing her back up against Balthier; she reached for her quiver and pulled an arrow loose.
Balthier saw her shot as clearly as she did, time appeared to stand still as the Princess efficiently wiped her bloody hands on her skirt, notched the arrow and let it loose, her cry more pain than rage, straight for Vayne Solidor's head.
Vayne Solidor went to his knees, having moved fractionally at the last second to escape Ashe's arrow lancing his brain, nevertheless the blow the Princess' arrow wrought was decisive.
In a desperate attempt to seize redemption or merely final damnation Gabranth attempted to sunder Vayne Solidor from mortality's grip once and for all. He failed.
' Resilient isn't he?'
Balthier drawled as the Princess found the strength to step away from him, his healing finally having done the work to stitch Ashe back together again.
Vaan was the first to chase after Vayne and the despised Venat, Balthier, had he had the time to think on it, might have been surprised to find himself right on the youth's heels.
Therefore it was Balthier who grabbed hold of Vaan and threw him to the ground as something truly monstrous occurred on the outer deck of the Sky Fortress.
' By all that's Holy!'
Ashe almost screamed as she and Fran, closely followed by Basch and Penelo skidded to a halt to watch the horror unfolding before them all.
Venat, plans reaching fruition, granted its last remaining puppet his Godhood, or a twisted parody of the same, wrought from the machinations of science and Magick.
Summoned by a wave of Mist that convulsed around and reverberated within Vayne's mutated, dying body, the Bahamut's battlements, its bolts and metal bracings, tore free and melded within Vayne until Vayne was not Vayne any longer.
For just a moment Balthier knew what true, paralysing fear felt like. The fear of a prey animal facing the predator it could not outrun.
As he and the rest of the party picked themselves up, the sky above aflame with the fury of the Undying One, Balthier realised that the time to run was passed, and he had never been so afraid.
'H-how do we fight this?'
Penelo, the youngest, sweetest, of the party moved towards Fran who held court close to Balthier as the abomination that was once Vayne Solidor took wing and circled the ruined circular deck atop Bahamut.
' Though he be one with Venat now, his heart still beats as a man's, I hear its stutter. This anthema can be felled as a man though he claim godliness.'
Fran intoned calmly, her eyes swooping after the circling monstrosity. Balthier, though he doubted even Fran could pick up a single heart beat over the din of sky battle above them, was relieved by Fran's words.
' So? Let's do it then.'
Vaan threw Balthier's sword back to him and ran to the edge of the platform, Save the Queen glinting in the eldritch pyrelight as he went to meet Vayne.
Basch followed suit, racing after the boy and Balthier glanced at Fran, who nodded once and the two of them joined the fray, each with a Deathbringer in hand.
Ashe and Penelo, with bow and gun respectively, arrayed themselves to the rear of the attack, shouting spells and warnings to those fool-hardy enough to attempt to fight this nightmare.
The platform of the sky deck split and sundered under the phenomenal power of the Undying One's assaults.
Balthier hit the smouldering, crackling metal of the deck hard as he leapt out of the way of a beam of condensed super heated Mist which scoured the deck almost in twain.
Balthier did not have the breath to cry out as he felt his arm break in two as he fell upon it.
A scream forced him upright, despite the pain and blood choking him and the Mist light dazzling him.
Balthier sought the sound and saw Penelo, flung clean across the deck by the power of the last hit clinging to a twisted guardrail, she hung over open air, off the edge of the deck.
Balthier did not trust his legs to carry him, so instead he rolled across the rubble strewn ground to the edge, ignoring the excruciating pain in his arm as he did so.
It was awkward to reach out to Penelo with only one arm but he managed to get a grip on her waist, the girl, lithe as a dancer, twisted and let go of the jagged bar of metal that was all that kept her suspended.
She used her own momentum to swing her body towards the crumbling edge of the deck and wrapped her arms around Balthier's neck and shoulders.
Strong arms gripping Balthier by the bracings of his vest hauled them both onto solid ground.
' Too close, that one.' Basch, bleeding from a scalp wound, growled as he helped pull Penelo, who was almost blue-lipped with shock, to her feet.
Balthier did not have the strength to come up with an appropriate witticism.
' Down!'
Ashe screamed to her troops as the Undying launched another missile of burning Mist their way.
When the after images of orange and green lightening cleared from his eyes and he could once again hear something more than the defiant roar of a creature that should never be allowed to live and rule over Ivalice, he found himself covered in a curtain of silky white.
Lying on his back he blinked up into Fran's wide, pinkish tinted eyes, her hair gleaming with the purity of snow against the hellfire sky above their heads.
' Fran this is hardly the time or the place.'
Balthier managed to croak as Fran sat up, straddling him and cast a healing upon him.
Fran ignored him and pulled him, with little sympathy for his aching body, to his feet.
' We can do this. He weakens, I know it.'
Ashe spoke in a resonant whisper, conviction, passion and pure spirit igniting her eyes until they glowed with inner light.
' Vayne would use the Mist against us, but I am of the Dynast Kings blood. Quickly, we must all call a Quickening upon him. Together we shall bring down this false idol.'
Without waiting for either assent or dissent from her chosen companions Ashe reached out and seized Balthier's hand in her left and Basch's in her right.
Fran closed her own long hand in Balthier's free right hand as Penelo grasped Fran's free hand and Vaan's in her other.
Vaan reached around and clasped Basch's hand as they created an unbroken circle.
Balthier was not the only one to utter a groan of pain, exhaustion and surprise as magick jumped from one to the other through their linked hands, a power forming in its sharing greater than anything they could bring to bear individually.
' Pyroclasm.' Vaan shouted; all enthusiasm and optimism.
' Shatterheart.' Fran was cool wind and endurance.
' Resplendence.' Penelo was true to her word, a soul too pure to be tainted by cruelty endured.
' Flame Purge.' Basch growled. The sly part of Balthier unaffected by external stimuli noted, that for Basch, the words were likely prophetic.
Balthier drew breath, ' Element of Treachery.' For what else, truly, could he bring to the fray?
' Maelstrom's Bolt.' Ashe was light and conviction personified, a true saint of salvation.
The whole of existence, it seemed to Balthier, Ivalice herself; took and held a breath, as the joint Quickening, the power within their six souls, filled every nuance of reality.
And then it was over, and Balthier sucked in an eager breath of air, the sky as faultlessly blue as any he had ever aspied.
He raised his fist lightly to knock against Fran's and caught the ghost of her smile.
They had done it. The Undying was nothing more than dust in the wind, the Empire would be Larsa's to play with now and below them Dalmasca awaited its Queen.
Balthier nodded in silent satisfaction to himself, it was time for he and Fran to fly.