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Final Fantasy VI: The Sands of Time

Book 1: The Begininng

Chapter 8 - Dream's End

Part 8.6 - Underworld

Alex knew things were not going well the moment he stepped below the streets of Narsille. His short, wet walk outside had been nightmarish enough, but to see the normally smooth operation of the city's underground world tossed to the storm weighed heavily on the old man's heart. Would things have been any better had he been here to guide his workers?

Alex looked from face to face as he pushed his way past the mass of people struggling to escape through the underground. He saw his own workers mixed in with the wild-eyed citizens every once in a while, all hope of controlling the flow forgotten. Alex knew what was drawing so many people to seek this particular method of escape. The long corridors of steel and stone were the one place in the city the storm could not reach.

There was a curious amount of smoke drifting upwards from further inside the city'sunderground, and whenever Alex tried to ask one of his over-worked engineers what it was or where it was coming from, he invariably got the same terse reply:

"Stay away from it, sir."

He would have to get to the bottom of that smoke. If one of the generators was malfunctioning, it could be disastrous for a city already on the brink. Alex suspected that in the chaos, some of his less-reliable engineers had left their posts manning the massive geothermal generators, and something had gone wrong. He was glad to see many of his more seasoned workers still trying their best to do their jobs, but he knew there would be plenty of younger ones who had dropped their tools and joined the mob at the first chance. With the hardening knot of fear he felt in his gut as he got closer to the heart of the city, he could hardly blame them.

It was times like these Alex felt blessed that his family did not live in Narsille. His wife, son, and daughter lived far away in the city of Doma. He wished he could be with them, but Narsille needed him more right now. This city had been his second home for many long years, and was almost like a son to him. To see it in such a state filled him with grief. His child was dying, and he knew there was little he could do to save it.

Alex had been the pioneering mind behind the construction of the great generators that powered the city, and he knew the explosive growth of the city over the last thirty years was because of that amazing source of power he had managed to harness. Deep below even the underground maze of metal and stone there dwelled an immense region of heat, a pocket of magma according to their measurements. Water from the Lethe River flowing over that never-ending heat source churned and boiled as it passed its way out of the mountains, creating a limitless supply of geothermal and hydroelectric energy.

This beating heart of fire and water is where Alex was headed now. Keeping the electricity flowing into the city was of utmost importance, since a loss of power would turn this disorganized mob into a crazed army of desperate animals. If that happened, there would be no stopping the downward spiral, and many lives would be unnecessarily lost. He had to save as many people as he could. The generators first, then the docking bay.

The few workers he had talked to along the way said they were already doing their best to get people boarded onto the Figaro and the other massive vehicles stored in the huge docking bay below Narsille. From what he could tell, the Committee had done almost nothing in the face of this disaster, and it was his engineers who had decided on their own to open the great mythril gates and start preparing for evacuation. It was comforting to know his workers could function without him, but he wanted to be there to help all the same. Narsille needed a leader now, and it seemed he was the only one still willing to fulfill that role.

Halfway to the generators, Alex felt a deep rumbling beneath his feet. An earthquake? He broke into a run, knowing any tectonic activity here was an ill omen. He had always known that pocket of magma beneath the city might be a ticking time bomb, but all studies had shown it to be completely stable for hundreds of thousands of years. Why now?

The rumbling stopped abruptly, and Alex breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps he had overreacted. These were stressful times, after all. He kept up his brisk run anyways, that feeling of dread building in his stomach. Something was definitely wrong down here.

As he was making his way towards the generators, he saw several Order priests in their distinctive black robes running among the rest of the fleeing population. He didn't pay them much attention, knowing full well their sanctuary was down among the underground structures as well. When he saw two Order priests carrying a screaming man away, though, that caught his attention. There was something terribly familiar about the look on the screaming man's face.

"What's the matter with him? Can I help?" Alex asked as he stopped to catch his breath.

The two priests stopped, holding the madman between them. There was a look only slightly less crazed in their eyes as they studied Alex.

"Get out of here while you still can, you fool!" The man on the left almost screamed.

"There's a monster inside the Order, it's killing everyone!" The other man said in equally hysterical tones.

"What?" Alex tried to ask, but the half-unconscious man in the middle suddenly looked at him, and howled.

"Black! All black!" he cackled, half sobbing, half laughing.

"What the hell is wrong with him?" Alex demanded with more force than he intended. The insanity of the three men was starting to get to him.

"The same thing that will happen to you if you keep going that way," the man on the left said with as much calmness as he could muster. "We're leaving this hellhole. C'mon!" He tugged at the crazy man and started to move forward again.

"Stay away from the smoke." The other man said as the three moved away from Alex as quickly as they could.

"Black! The Pearl is black! Ha, ha, ha!" The crazy man's laugh spluttered into a deep sob as his voice faded away from Alex.

The pearl is black? Genju had said the Pearl of Order would turn black if balance was lost. Had they seen the pearl?Alex's thoughts raced as he hurried towards the generators. Something was definitely wrong down here.

He had only moved a short distance from where he had encountered the three men when the rumbling returned. This time it was no deep vibration, but a full-blown earthquake. The ground jerked savagely, throwing Alex to the ground. Dust and rocks fell around him, blinding him. The ground was shaking wildly, twisting the corridor into almost impossible shapes. Alex knew he had to get up and get into an open area or he'd be crushed. How much farther to the generator rooms?

Fighting back the vertigo that was trying to overtake him in the writhing tunnel, Alex stumbled to his feet and forced himself forward. There was a strong light close to him, but he couldn't make anything out in the haze of debris. He half walked, half crawled towards the light, coughing on the dust. Or was it smoke? It was impossible to tell in the dark tunnel. Alex remembered the warning he had heard repeatedly as he descended:

Stay away from the smoke.

No time to worry about it now. Alex tried as best he could not to breath in too much of the unknown air, but he was tired and sore and needed to keep moving. As he gulped down the air, he tasted something foul that made him choke instantly. It wasn't the ashen taste of normal smoke, or the earthy taste of dirt. This was something else, something rotten.

As a geologist, he had been to several volcanoes throughout the world, and this rotten taste was familiar to him. It was sulfur dioxide, a poisonous gas found in volcanic eruptions. If there was sulfur in this smoke, then that could mean only one thing - the magma pocket had been breached, and he was in deadly danger.

Alex wavered in the shaking tunnel, wondering if he should keep going. This disaster was quickly escalating beyond him, and it might be best to just flee like the others. What could he do in the face of a volcanic eruption?

He could save lives.

There might still be people down here, and he knew he had to try and see while there was time. So he kept struggling forward towards the light.

Another massive shock reverberated through the tunnel, and Alex watched in dismay as the long line of electric lights on the walls flickered, then went out in a quick succession down the tunnel away from him.

So it had happened. The generators had failed. Perhaps not all of them, though. That light at the end of the tunnel was glowing, more brightly than ever. Alex tried to quicken his pace through the deteriorating underground, but larger and larger chunks of rock and metal were hampering his progress as the earthquake increased in fury. The smoke was thickening as well, threatening to suffocate him.

With a gasp Alex tumbled into the great room where the light was coming from. He glanced up at the wall and saw a large number 18 painted in red. As he had thought, this was one of the main generator rooms, somewhere near the middle of the city from the number. But what he saw through the haze of dust, smoke, and ash was a vision of pure hell.

The light was not coming from his generators. Now that he could see more clearly, the light was plainly red, and coming from a massive outbreak of fires around the rows of giant generators. There was no one trying to put out the fires. Alex couldn't seen anyone in the area, but he knew there were still people down here somewhere. He could hear their distant screams echoing off the high walls of the cavern, but he couldn't see any way to reach their source.

The river that flowed between the rows of burning generators was boiling away and filling the room with mist as well as smoke. Alex stood near the river, a towering generator rising on either side of the doorway he had just come through. His eyes followed the powerful river along its course, and saw it fall away in the great waterfall he had seen many times. Now, though, there was something sinister happening just beyond the lip of the waterfall.

Another blazing red glow was pouring from the depths, deeper and hotter than the fires above. A loud hissing of evaporating water accompanied the rumbling of the earthquake and the screams of the dying. Alex knew what must be happening below. The magma that had been safely contained for millennia had broken free of its shell of rock and was flowing freely over everything below. The destruction and carnage that must be happening just out of his sight below would be beyond words. If this quake didn't stop soon, the entire city might be consumed in the violent reawakening of this sleeping monster.

Realizing he was now far too late to save whoever was unfortunate enough to be below, and perhaps too late to even save himself, Alex turned to try and find a side corridor that he knew would lead him to the main hub, the quickest route to the surface. He hoped he would find someone along the way that he could save, but the chances were decreasing with every passing moment. Even now, the screams were fading into the background roar of water, fire, and earth. Explosions replaced screams as the overworked and abandoned generators blew one by one. Alex could feel his chest tighten in grief as he thought of his dying city he was helpless to save.

"Help me!"

About to leave the room, Alex whipped around to the direction of the voice he had heard. There was someone still alive here! He rushed to where he had heard the voice, hoping they could be saved.

"Please! Someone!"

The voice was coming from one of the burning generators closest to the ground beside the waterfall's edge. Alex braved the fiery wreckage and pushed aside rocks and chunks of machinery until he reached the source of the voice. As he approached the edge of the cascading water, he allowed himself to peer down into the blazing mouth of the abyss beyond. He pulled back quickly, seeing more than he could stand. There was nothing but a glowing river of lava covering everything at the base of the waterfall. Large pieces of the cavern below fell into the burning sea and melted instantly. Rigging that had been set up along the waterfall was falling into the lave piece by piece as the heat and tremors tore it down.

And the infernal river was rising. Soon it would reach the top, and then the true destruction of Narsille's underground world would begin. Alex knew he had very little time to rescue whoever was here and get to the surface.

"Is someone there? Help me, I'm trapped!" the voice said, weaker than before, but closer. Alex heard a raspy cough as the voice choked on the acrid smoke filling the room.

Heaving the last bit debris aside, Alex squinted through the dust to try and see where the trapped person was. He heard another cough, weaker than the one before, and finally saw his target. A sooty hand poked out from a pile of twisted pipes and rock. Beyond the hand was a body, mostly buried, but partially visible. The person's head was free, but the eyes were closed, and the breathing shallow.

"I'm here! Hold on!" Alex said desperately, not wanting to lose this last surviving remnant of his people. He began to rip the broken pipes away from the person's body, heaving the boulders aside in a rush of adrenaline. It was brutal work, but Alex was extremely fit for his age, and with one mighty effort he freed the person from their cage of metal and rock.

It was not what Alex had expected. This was not one of his workers at all. It was another Order priest! And he was old, probably older than Alex from the look of him. He had a long white beard and heavily wrinkled features that showed a life filled with stress and hard work. Alex had a flash of memory and the face of the Order's High Elder he had met so long ago filled his vision. This man was as old as the High Elder was back then and looked just like him. But the High Elder was surely deceased by now. Was this the new High Elder? Alex had no idea, having left the Order to their own devices after the tragedy of Phoenix Isle.

As he looked at the old man, Alex saw that he had something wrapped in an ornate blue cloth cradled under the arm that had been buried. From his position it looked like he had put himself at great risk trying to protect whatever was in that bundle of cloth. The cloth looked vaguely familiar to Alex, and he felt the same sense of deja vu that had struck him when he saw the face of the mad priest earlier. They were connected, but how? Alex didn't have time to try and remember.

"You...saved me..." The old man struggled between harsh rattling gasps. There were flecks of blood around his mouth, and a growing dark spot on his chest that Alex didn't like the look of. He had burns all over his body, and his white robes were stained almost black with ash and soot. Could he have somehow escaped from below?

"Can you stand? We need to get out of here!" Alex said, clearing away more rubble and trying to revive the man enough to stand.

The man pushed Alex's hands away from his body in a feeble gesture.

"No...I must stay here. My Order has fallen, and I shall fall with it." The words cost the man an enormous amount of energy, and he fell back almost unconscious.

"Don't be a fool! Get up, before the lave reaches us!" Alex tried to lift the man onto his shoulders, but he resisted, still clutching the bundle of cloth.

The old man's eyes flickered open, and he looked hard at Alex's face next his. He smiled, showing teeth stained red with blood.

"I know you...Alex Figaro."

"What?" Alex almost dropped the man upon hearing his name called by this stranger.

"You don't remember me, but I was there, thirty years ago." the old man coughed, bringing fresh blood up. He continued despite the obvious pain, determined to speak.

"I was...one of the priests who went with...poor Jehad. We abandoned him there...and our Order has suffered much...because of our poor decision...since then." He stopped, struggling to keep himself conscious.

"Enough talk! Let's go. Now!" Alex tried to move the priest, but he wouldn't budge.

"I'm dying. Let me say my piece." The man said in a whisper, but with a note of command. Alex knew time was short, but he felt hypnotized by this unexpected visitor from his past.

"Sade...has destroyed us."

"Sade!" Alex burst out in anger. "What has that demon done now?"

The old man tried to laugh, but couldn't. "Nothing we didn't bring upon ourselves. But now it is...too late to save our Order. I tried to keep the old traditions alive...but the High Elder was right all along."

"What are you saying? Please, we have to leave." Alex said, almost begging the man to try and save himself.

"You." The dying man pointed one gnarled finger at Alex, his eyes glittering with tears. "Altimus...has guided you to me in my final moments...and my duty is...clear..."

"Wait!" Alex almost shouted as the old man's eyes closed again. His chest heaved less with each breath, and the ugly dark spot under his robes was no longer growing. Alex could see the man was almost dead. What was keeping him here? Why didn't he leave this man and run? Alex felt trapped by some invisible force, every muscle in his body telling him this was where he was supposed to be.

"Take these..." His voice hummed from almost motionless lips. "Keep...the Order...alive...in your heart...don't let...the world forget...us..."

The man's head fell to the side, and he was gone. The bundle he had been gripping tightly until the moment of his death fell softly to the ground and rolled to Alex's feet. Alex let the old man's body down gently and bent to pick up the strange treasure of the last faithful member of the Order of the Pearl.

As soon as his fingers pulled the cloth aside, he knew what it was the old man had risked his life to protect. An electric jolt of energy shot through his arm, and a half-forgotten memory burst into his mind's eye, overlapping the exposed bundle at his fingertips. This was the Pearl of Order, now black, and under it the scroll that contained the Crystalline Prophecy. The blue cloth was the very cloth the Pearl had rested on at the heart of the Order's sanctuary hall.

"What is this..." Alex said to himself in a daze.

Another explosion nearby shocked him back to his senses and he quickly looked around. There was no one else to save, no more sounds of life here. He had to escape now, or the sea of fire below would consume him. He willed his legs to move, the Pearl and the scroll wrapped safely in the cloth under his arm. He remembered that look on the crazed priest now. He had worn that same look when he had held the scroll on board the Maiden, thirty years ago. To touch the holy words of God was to invite madness. Even through the cloth, Alex could still feel a dangerous flow of energy. What had the old priest given him?

No time to think, he would have to sort things out later. The earthquake was over, but the lava was still rising, and he had to get out of this crumbling cavern. He blindly groped towards the direction he knew the exit into the main hub must be. The smoke around him had increased, blotting out almost all the blazing light. He would collapse from the smoke soon if he didn't find fresh air.

He could taste ash, dirt, and the rotten sulfur taste, but there was something else in this smoke that wasn't there before. It almost felt like a swarm of insects, buzzing inside his mouth and lungs.

Stay away from the smoke.

The warning echoed in his head, but there was nothing he could do. He had to get out of here. He plunged forward through the thick black cloud, trying to hold his breath as long as he could. The tingling feeling inside him only increased, as if it were trying to get out.

He felt a surge of urgency pulse from the bundle in his arms. What was that feeling? It felt like...fear? From the Pearl? Just what had the priest given him?

He could feel the Pearl's fear coursing through him, and soon he felt real fear himself. The buzzing inside him was becoming almost unbearable, and he couldn't hold his breath much longer. He stumbled a few more paces towards the exit, but fell to one knee, unable to move any further. He tried to crawl, but he was utterly exhausted. He stretched one desperate hand forward, then fell to the ground. He convulsively opened his mouth as he lay on the stone floor, trying to let in as much air as he could while trying to free himself from the repulsive buzzing inside.

It was no use. The more filthy air he took in, the harder it was the breath, and the worse the buzzing became. His mind began to cloud over, and with his last moment of consciousness he covered the Pearl of Order with his body, unaware that it was the exact same protective position as the old priest.

Several minutes later the massive flow of lava reached the top of the waterfall, and poured over the hulking masses of generators. Explosions rocked the cavern, collapsing the entire area into the growing river of fire. Molten metal bobbed over the surface of the ever-growing sea of lava as the last of Generator Room 18 disappeared into the flames.

A few moments before, while Alex had been trying to save the old man, Generator Room 16 had suffered a similar fate, and its destruction had created a devastating cave-in that had brought the very streets of Narsille crashing down into the molten pit. A gaping hole, exposed to the storm raging above was all that was left of the area. The imploded dome of the Committee headquarters flashed for a moment in this newly formed lake of fire, and then was gone.

When the fire came to Room 18, Alex was no longer lying on the floor. He had vanished, along with his precious cargo, into the smoke.

"He will make an excellent addition to the Flames of Dis," a disembodied hiss echoed above the flames, pleased. It was not one voice, but three.