Prologue II

Original story and characters set in universe by Square Enix. No for-profit ownership is claimed over any of them.

There was only darkness.

Something heavy was sealing him in this boiling tomb, his entire body feeling as if cooked from the outside in. The taste of blood filled his mouth, dried out from the smoke and dust filling his lungs. He could hear faint rumblings of large chunks of material heaved around easily by a great force. These rumblings grew ever louder, as if something was approaching him from underneath. Or from above. He couldn't tell which way was up, as he had already lost his bearings in the explosion that embedded him in the bedrock.

He tried to scream, but the weight upon his ribcage only forced out a pained whimper that sounded more like a wheeze. His limbs as far toward the extremities as he could feel remained immobile, rendering him unable to brace for whatever was coming for him.

That blackness slid into an almost equally-dark shade of blue as something lifted the final significant chunk of rubble from his upper body. The chilly night air settled upon his face, dealing slim comfort against that portion of him now exposed to the elements.

"There you are," came the voice of his solitary rescuer, peering into the gap where he lay. To her, it was a miracle he was alive and recognizable, managing to recognize the basic shapes of his face through the burns and bruises

But to him, the only miracle he could ask for now was death itself. Fear clutched whatever parts of his body weren't crushed or otherwise rendered completely numb by debris as, despite his blurry vision, he realized that whoever had found him was not here to rescue him. Indeed, he thought, no, swore he had rendered the fatal blow upon her to cause the explosion that left him in this fissure.

Her silvery-white hair glowed by the moonlight of the starless sky, a gentle, almost healing glow that certainly didn't impede his eyesight adjusting. Her body was a perfectly-shaped vision of beauty with a pair of white wings expanding outward from her back, clad in a skin-tight red leather outfit that favored mobility and magic over defense.

But this...this was no angel.

He gasped as if awakening from a dream only slightly less tolerable, the thought of a rescue and all hopes thereof vanishing from his mind. He could only move his head to see what lay around him, and even then that was a freedom he regretted as his sight finally cleared up in what he realized was his only working eye.

The world around him was one of total desolation. The rotting hulls of ages-old airships could be seen by the horizon, each of them damaged in ways that corresponded to which way they pointed to the epicenter. But rotted and burned wood did not impact his already shattered psyche as much as the sight of someone else's singed and bloodied flesh.

Strewn across the debris were assorted bodies and parts thereof, mutilated almost beyond recognition. But he knew which souls once resided in those once-intact bodies, such knowledge chilling him to whatever bones were still attached to his own body. The visceral odors rising from those fragments mixed in with the smoke billowing from the smoldering wreckages, and inhaling it only amplified the fear that left him with no recourse but to lament not having suffered the same fate.

"You yet live," Ultima said, smiling sadistically, "Small consolation for the ruin of our plans." She reached out a hand to stroke the boy's bruised cheek, her touch finally draining whatever hope he had of escape from this endless, desolate wasteland. He sniveled at her touch, his tears interspersed with the odd bubble of blood he coughed up from whatever debris had found their way into his throat.

Ramza Beoulve had indeed brought ruin to the Lucavi's plans for domination, but at the price of his friends, his family, and once the Angel of Blood had finished with him...were even possible for a being like her to do so? He turned his head away again, squinting his eyes shut and holding his breath in a futile brace for the inevitable.

"Release him! You war with me!"

Someone called out for his would-be captor. A male voice, vaguely familiar to him. He opened his eye again to find her looking to the side, shocked that somebody else had survived. But he couldn't tell if she was smiling or shocked from this sudden revelation.

He tried to say something, anything, to call out to whoever that was, but in that instant his vision went white.

Prologue II End