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Final Fantasy VI: The Sands of Time

Book 1: The Begininng

Chapter 8 - Dream's End

Part 8.5 - Path of the Damned

Cruz was becoming increasingly agitated as he and Dehr trekked through the streets of Narsille. Why were there no automated buses to take them straight back to headquarters? The few manually operated vehicles they had seen were all going in one direction - out of Narsille. Walking on foot through the cold, rain-drenched streets of the city was almost as bad as walking through the jungles of Crescent Island. Worse even. The wind buffeted them from random directions and the roar of the constant thunder made it impossible to hear much else.

And the people! Cruz knew intellectually that the population of his city numbered in the millions, but to actually see and hear those numbers thronging through the corridors of the city was unbelievably oppressive. The only sound that rivaled the roar of the thunder was the steady drone of a hundred thousand terrified voices. Wails, sobs, screams, curses - the sounds of the damned filled the air between thunderclaps.

It was as they had feared when they first left the Maiden and saw the darkening clouds. The people were in full-blown panic, and were trying to flee the city without any order or leadership. The sheer amount of bodies pressed into the streets almost put Cruz into a panic himself. It was true, the mob mentality was infectious, and that disease had spread its roots straight to the heart of Narsille. He wiped the cold sweat from his brow and tried to steady his wildly beating heart ashe jostled his way through the mass of people.

Dehr remained calm as always, though. Cruz could only marvel at her ability to suppress that gut feeling to flee that he knew she must surely be feeling as well. But that was why she was the President, and he was merely her aide. He wondered how the rest of the Committee was handling the situation. Were there any people of Dehr's quality among them now? He doubted it, judging from the chaotic flow of people that pressed against them as they moved against the never-ending wave of flesh. There was only one force guiding these people now - Flee, flee, flee.

"Adam, watch yourself."

Dehr's cool, clipped tones broke through Cruz's wandering thoughts. He looked down at his feet and saw it again. That strange black smoke. It was everywhere, and seemed to cling to anyone who wandered too close to any opening to the underground facilities of the city. Cruz had just stepped near one of the grates in the road, and the smoke had wrapped a misty tendril affectionately around his heel. He kicked it off and increased his pace to keep up with Dehr. What was going on beneath the city? Had one of the generators malfunctioned? This smoke seemed oddly familiar to Cruz, though. It was not something he had ever seen in his tours of the underground, though, that he was sure of.

"We must hurry Adam, please try to keep up with me."

Cruz grumbled, but sped up to a near trot to stay behind Dehr. They had made it far enough through the city to see the headquarters squat, domed form separate itself from the forest of towers around them. The throng of people had thinned out the closer they got to the center of the city, and they had the main roads almost to themselves now. Only a little further, and they would see what was left of Narsille's command structure.

Almost as soon as they had caught sight of the headquarters, their vision of hope was shattered. A massive explosion rocked the inside of the dome, and the two watched in slow-motion as the ground itself rose outwards from the building like ripples in a pond. The first wave of earth struck them bodily and threw them both to the ground. The earth was shaking violently, cracks shooting out from around the headquarters foundation in all directions. With each crack a mighty snapping sound boomed from below, and a red glow could be seen from deep inside the split ground.

There was nothing either of them could do. Cruz and Dehr looked on in awe as the massive fissures grew wider with each tremor, showing more of that fiery red light as they grew. A horrible sound of grinding metal and breaking glass met their ears and they watched as the massive structure of the headquarters lurched sickeningly to one side, tilting a dozen feet or more downwards.

"My god! It's going to fall!" Cruz cried out without thinking, struggling against the shaking ground to keep his eyes on the building.

Dehr kept her gaze firm as she watched the building teeter, her face a grim mask of forced control. "This is his doing," was all she said.

Cruz was about to ask what she meant, but was cut short by another explosion from inside the building. Flames shot out from the broken windows and smoke seeped out from cracks in the great domed roof. It only took a moment. The cracks spread across the dome like an egg, and in one magnificently blue cloud of mythril dust, the roof collapsed in on itself.

The chain reaction was immediate and catastrophic. The collapsing dome fed the destruction of the floors below it, and as the building imploded one stage at a time, the force of the roof's fall tipped the precarious balance that had kept the building standing above the ground's cracked surface. Before the building could destroy itself under its own weight, what was left of it plunged out of sight into the chasm the quake had created. A gust of hot air expanded outwards from the falling building and slammed into the onlookers. The final screams of the poor souls still trapped inside could be heard faintly, carried to Cruz's and Dehr's ears by the hellish winds.

When the earthquake finally subsided, there was nothing left but the frayed edges of concrete roads dangling over the rim of the massive crater the building had left behind. The infernal glow that had seeped from the cracks was now a burning blaze of light inside the chasm. Cruz and Dehr did not need to move any closer to see what was inside that gaping hole. The rush of heat told them all they needed to know. They had seen something exactly like this before. Where their headquarters had been a moment before was now a huge bubbling cauldron of magma, a miniature version of the wound Sade had inflicted on Crescent Island.

"We've got to get out of here. Now." Dehr said in a cold tone that cut through the heated air like a knife.

"W-what? Where? There's nowhere to go!" Cruz blubbered, his defenses finally breaking down. All gone. It was all gone. Their headquarters, and most likely whoever was brave enough to stay behind to try and guide the city, swallowed by Sade's insanity in one fiery gulp.

This was too much for Cruz to take. Eyes wide and mouth hanging stupidly agape, he stumbled backwards away from Dehr. He tumbled onto his back, tripping over something on the ground.

"Adam! Look out!" Dehr shouted, her icy exterior breaking for one brief moment as she saw what was about to happen.

Cruz had not tripped. He had stepped blindly into that inky black smoke, and what was only a foreboding caress before was now a fierce grip. One tendril wrapped around his leg and yanked him down to the ground. As he struggled to extricate himself, several more wisps of smoke grabbed his limbs, holding him in place. He utter a high-pitched shriek that sputtered into a choking cough as the smoke flowed over him like a death shroud.

"Eva, help me!" Cruz managed to spit out as the black shroud covered his face.

Dehr tried to reach for Cruz to pull him out of the thickening cloud, but a coldly familiar voice froze her like a statue.

"Eva, join me."

Dehr turn her head to try and find the source of the voice, but there was no one. Only the increasing cloud of smoke that now thickly covered the entire area around the newly formed crater.

"Sade! Show yourself!" She shouted, fear creeping into her voice now.

"I am here, Eva. Join me. Join us."

"Never! I'm done following you! Look what your plans have brought to my city! Our city!" Dehr tried to sound defiant, but the fear in her voice was obvious. She could feel that same seductive force filling her just like before, just like inside Crescent Mountain. This time, though there was no one to protect them from Sade's power.

"Adam no longer fights me. See?"

Dehr looked back down at her fallen companion, and to her horror she only saw a black cocoon of smoke completely hiding Cruz's form. Was he dead?

As if reading her thoughts, the voice of Sade answered. "He is still alive. He will join us, becoming so much more than the sniveling dog that he was. This was all he ever wanted, after all. To have power, to be respected. Is this not what you desire as well, Eva?

"I don't want your kind of power, Sade! You only want to destroy!" Dehr's words were defiant, but she could feel Sade's influence steadily pulling her down, down, down.

"I want what my Master wants. The Vengeful Poltergeist's wrath is my wrath. My revenge! This unworthy world will be burnt to cinders, then rebuilt by my hand. You could be a part of that, Eva. I know this is what you want. Do not deny your heart's desire. Join us!"

The last words were a fierce command that made Dehr shudder as if struck. She uttered a weak groan, knowing Sade's lies were nothing but truth. She wanted power and control. To guide the feeble masses into a glorious future where she held the reigns...that was her heart's desire. But so much destruction! Was that the inevitable price to be paid for her world vision? She only had to utter one word and her fate was sealed, the pact made.

"Yes."

Her voice was hollow as she gave in to Sade's overwhelming pressure. The effect was immediate. The sea of smoke swirled around her consenting body, wrapping itself around her just as it had Cruz. It didn't feel as bad as she thought it would. She felt...powerful. She closed her eyes with a look of rapt pleasure on her face as the blackness took her.

A moment later, the streets around the former site of the Committee headquarters were empty, not a soul to be seen. Only a thick film of black smoke over a boiling pit of magma remained. The Committee for the Preservation of Peace was no more.

A slow laughter echoed across the desolate wreckage of the city's center, but there was no one left alive to hear it. The heart of Narsille had been corrupted and devoured at last. It was only a matter of time before the rot would spread itself outwards, gripping the city of dreams in its never-ending nightmare of death and destruction.

And then, the world.