Chapter 82

The Last Garland

After a bitter day of intercity fighting, Tyris was seated at Ballad's bedside. They were in Galbadia Garden's infirmary. It was a tightly packed ward with many other casualties, so full of occupied stretchers and drips that it was very difficult for the medical staff to move between them. Tyris had quickly recalled how to block out the incessant and pained cries of the grievously wounded; Ballad was her only concern, and she had not the healing powers to help anyone else present.

No favours had been done for the leader of Garland, and Tyris knew Ballad would not have wanted his own private room anyway. His chest was caked in plaster and his head was bandaged, leaving just one eye visible, which was closed now. One of his arms were also in a cast, which rested at his side. Minimal curative spells had been spared for him, which had enabled him to claw his way from the Netherworld but had only marginally sped up his recovery. The staff had given Ballad all the morphine they were permitted to for now and he had blacked out from the pain again.

The arrival of Baldur Vossler from the north had been instrumental in reclaiming the city of Jericho. He had brought thousands of reinforcements downriver to attack Esthar's ships and flank Magitek blockades in the east. The geography of the western continent working in the Allies' favour, Esthar had had to transport their small attack boats across land via hovercraft. Baldur had smashed the paltry fleet Esthar had already managed to place in the Obel Lake, which had enabled him to add critical amphibious support to the districts saved by Tyris. Making full use of Tyris' own knowledge of imperial tactics, Baldur and Headmaster Biggs had been able to retake the east by afternoon, and then the west by nightfall. He was currently labouring upon a new marine invasion that would pre-empt the taking of the city centre.

While Baldur was some ten years younger than his elder brother, he had proven to be an effective field commander in his first real campaign. Baldur himself was named for a heroic Saronan knight who had been slain defending the walls of Jericho, and the old city's western gate had been named after him. Leading his men through the gate of his namesake to retake the west had been highly symbolic. He was determined to push the Esthari from the city centre by daybreak.

Tyris assumed Selena would have become High Commander of imperial forces after Zebalga's death. While Tyris had dreaded her former lover arriving south of Jericho with reinforcements, this had not happened. Selena, along with Admiral Ramius, had been in an equally fierce battle with White SeeD and the Centrans at Redwood.

In the latest struggle, Tyris herself had captured Legatus Ragnar, the former Adel whom she remembered had been the eldest son of Reinhardt. Reinhardt himself still commanded ineffectively from astride Sleipnir, and seemingly cared little for the capture of his son, killing messengers during a parley when Biggs and Baldur had hoped he may lead the legions away from the city in return for Ragnar's release. Based on what Tyris knew of the First Praetorian, Reinhardt had likely already disowned Ragnar. The young Legatus was presently under heavy guard in Garden's holding cells.

Tyris had clashed with Reinhardt since she had first thwarted his charge in the morning, using her wings and her thunderbolts to full advantage. Her aim was to build the highlander's frustrations to a breaking point, contributing to his inability to command effectively and to prevent Esthar from regaining any ground. While she could not kill Reinhardt from the air – and she had tried – Tyris was unwilling to risk engaging him in a pitched battle on the ground. In a grounded battle, Reinhardt would assuredly have the advantage, and Tyris was only going to pick a fight she knew she could win.

While Ballad was in a coma, his GF was back at full strength. Fruitlessly, Tyris had reached out to Cerberus as she would her own. If the eleventh-hour saviour of the Battle of the Gardens would just ride freely, then the efforts to retake Jericho would have been that much easier. With Cerberus aiding her, Tyris may have even risked challenging Reinhardt on the ground, as his continued presence was the only reason the imperial offensive had not completely fallen flat. Alas, the Gatekeeper was honour-bound by the pact he and Ballad had made in the Jade Passage all those years ago. The only other human he would fight for, Xu, was already dead. And so, Cerberus lay dormant within his vessel, unwilling to split for a greater good.

'Tyris?' a female voice said.

Tyris turned to see a freckled, redheaded woman in the all-black Garland uniform. She had a scimitar across her back and what looked like barbed and retractable wrist-blades over her cuffs. Towering behind her was a Trabian highlander, more than a full head taller, with spiked blond hair and ice-blue eyes; a zweihander rested diagonally over his shoulders. They could not reach the bedside, as there were other stretchers with wounded Garden cadets on Ballad's other side, and Tyris had placed her foldable steel chair in a small open space between herself and where they stood.

'Nadia,' Tyris acknowledged, looking between them. 'Siegfried.' She knew who they were by their appearances, as Ballad had oft spoke of his closest friends. So, they had not fallen victim to Reinhardt and Zebalga after all. 'Forgive me. We assumed the two of you were dead.'

Nadia shook her head solemnly. 'We were seconded to the Dragoons.'

Sieg stared at Ballad, lividly taking in his injuries. 'Reinhardt, that bastard!' he cursed, and Tyris noted his Galbadian accent, remembering he had been born in Winhill. Ramuh also noted the moogles junctioned within them.

'Can you help him?' Tyris asked Nadia, remembering she was a white mage.

Nadia shook her head again. 'I used all of my stocks at Yaulney. I'm assuming the Draw Room is completely dry?'

Tyris nodded. Garden had expended their para-magic stocks earlier in the day, and were carefully rationing what remained.

Sieg placed his giant mitts on his head, looking around the ward. 'Biggs never should have sent us to the Roshfall! If only we had been here!'

Nadia sighed reluctantly. 'If we had, we'd have gone the same way as Yemi and everyone else! It would have made no difference, Sieg! At least with our moogles we've got a fighting chance at some payback!'

'Too right!' Sieg said. 'Come on, Nadia, let's go and get that son-bitch!'

With a few giant strides, Sieg was almost gone from the ward. Nadia hesitated, Sieg slamming open the double doors with one huge palm and gone before Nadia could say another word. Nadia seemed about to follow, but she hesitantly turned back.

'Tyris, you mean everything to Ballad,' she said. Tyris was suddenly very aware of the engagement ring hanging at her bosom. 'I mean that. The reason Ballad was so heroic during the last Timber campaign was because he felt like he had nothing but Garland left after his first marriage failed. In some ways, he proved Leah right,' she mentioned sadly. 'In its conception, Garland had no leader, as we answered directly to President Caraway. But in Ballad, we all felt like we had a man that we could follow. Beyond reversing the reputation of the Deling clan, he cared nothing for his own survival. It's true that Ballad courted a glorious death as readily as he courted yourself. You've given him something to live for, after the war. I thank you for that, Tyris.'

'Just be careful,' Tyris urged, as Nadia followed Sieg through the doors.

Tyris looked vacantly around at the happenings in the ward, then back to Ballad's prostrate body.

Developments further north had also reached her. The Galbadians' taking of Yaulney Canyon had happened an hour past, and Tyris knew the endgame for Ultimecia was swiftly approaching. She cared little for the fate of Jericho City. She answered neither to Biggs nor Baldur, and Reinhardt was not her problem. She needed to be there when Ultimecia finally met her end. After all this time, waiting for her chance at vengeance, how could she not be? The Esthari would soon be gone from the whole western continent in the event of their Empress' death, and with her whole army on the verge of being routed, Ultimecia was more exposed than she had ever been.

It was only a few more minutes before Tyris reached a decision to depart. Leaning to plant a kiss on Ballad's lips, she rose and exited the ward, looking for the nearest outdoor area from which she could take flight for East Academy. With a stroke of luck, Sieg and Nadia would be victorious. More likely not, Tyris knew, but she planned for Ultimecia to be dead before Reinhardt even realised that she had left the area.

Reinhardt was sleeping in his saddle, his hammer crossed over his thighs as Sleipnir trotted around the old cobbled streets of central Jericho. It irked him that he had to succumb to sleep, though it was a deliberate weakness Hyne had instilled in all of His creations save for the elves. The gigases had been no exception, and their intermingling with humans had not eradicated this trait. Though it was but for a couple of hours, following his clash with the traitorous Tyris Almasy, and Odin was commanded to wake him at full battle readiness should anyone with malicious intentions come near him.

He dreamed of the one he was ashamed to call his eldest son. It disgusted him that Ragnar had surrendered, instead of charging the winged Almasy in an act of hopeless defiance that would have ensured his place in Valhalla. This was why Reinhardt was here. It was not to rescue his son, but rather to send him on his way and erase the embarrassment to his bloodline.

Reinhardt rode through the corridors of Galbadia Garden, smiting cadets left and right and trampling fleeing junior classmembers in his path. Their para-magic bounced off his pale armour and struck their own pathetic fighters. Although he had never set foot in the fortress, he instinctively knew the way to the solitary confinement, and when he found it, he pulled on the reins of Sleipnir so the eight-legged GF could obliterate those doors with his blood-stained hooves. Then, they trotted down a fluorescently-lit corridor with numbered cells lining each side. Reinhardt knew which was contained his son, and it was not labelled with a number, but the word Bleyða.

Reinhardt dismounted Sleipnir. With his hammer head shining the same colour as his armour, he knocked the power-operated sliding door from its casing and into the wall beyond, knowing Ragnar was not in its path, but laying prone on the undersized bed to its side.

His son had been expecting him, sitting up and swivelling to face his father. Reinhardt had long suspected that Ragnar harboured vengeful feeling towards him for killing his mother. But the look in his son's eyes was one of resigned submission. Ragnar was weak, like his mother, and shared her red hair. He was undeserving of the forked beard that trailed down his chest. He had no weapon in hand, which ensured he would be damned to Niflheim, and did not raise his hands in defence as Reinhardt brought his hammer down on his skull.

Reinhardt had been staring at his son's crumpled body at his feet when he suddenly awoke in his saddle. Odin had done his duty; Vossler had begun his new offensive. As anticipated, all the way down the river-lining avenue, green-camouflaged Saronan marines were appearing in increasing number. There were a series of explosions as their urban assault vehicles engaged the Magitek emplacements in the north of the city centre. Reinhardt scanned the dark skies for the beige cloak or the snowy beard of Ramuh, or the winged form of Almasy, but saw neither. Then he spurred Sleipnir and charged.

The Destroyer commended these ambitious marines as he smote them down – after all, the robust amphibious soldiers were most similar to the seafaring marauders of his own ancestral people. He lunged left and right from his saddle as Sleipnir galloped, always riding the momentum of the previous blow, each ferocious strike pulverising them and leaving these would-be heroes strewn like broken toy soldiers thrown by an ungrateful child. He had visibly thwarted their insertion when no fewer of twenty of them lay either still or writhing, and roared for the legionnaires nearby to regroup into a century in anticipation of the second wave.

Then, Reinhardt saw the unmistakeable headlights of two Garden-issue motorcycles fast approaching. He gripped his hammer and held it crossed over his breastplate, squinting through the growing lights. The riders, a man and a woman, stopped their motorcycles and took their weapons from their backs. They wore distinctive all-black uniforms.

Garlands. So, he had not got all of them. Reinhardt recognised the man as a fellow highlander both from his girth and from the white-blond hair shining in his headlight. The woman was diminutive, resembling Ragnar's mother somewhat with her crimson hair and swirls of freckles, though that was the limit of Reinhardt's attraction as she twirled a scimitar.

'Garland's not done with you yet, you son of a bitch!' the man said.

Like Ragnar, the blond man did not speak like a highlander. Like his son, this pretender was a watered-down disgrace to the gigases. He did not even have a beard, and his smooth, fair features made him look more like a Shieldmaiden. The redhead could probably defeat him. Still, his boldness would be his way to Valhalla. The woman would be the bigger threat, if only marginally, and Reinhardt noted those retracted blades parallel to her forearms. Abruptly, the two of them shone with a silvery aura, a power he did not understand.

Reinhardt rode them down, forcing them rev their motorcycles and veer to either side. The blond highlander lunged sidelong, though his greatsword was knocked from his grip upon striking Reinhardt's shoulder and clattered to the cobbles. The woman had been out of range, though quickly skidded around to face him; she probably believed she was prepared for Reinhardt, but was she ready for Sleipnir? Reinhardt commanded the eight-legged warhorse to charge right at her before she could reach a substantial speed, and she had to leap from her bike to avoid being caught in his path. The motorcycle was knocked over with the violent crash, and the redhead immediately smote at Sleipnir to little avail, rolling to one side to avoid a lunging bite from him. Reinhardt had landed in front of the fallen zweihander after dismounting, his feet by the hilt.

Suddenly, he realised who the young man was. The blue dragon engraved beneath the crossguard of that greatsword was very distinctive, though it had not earned the name Giantsbane until the penultimate Lunar Cry, when the entire Trabian highlands civilisation had come close to annihilation. This must be the son of the legendary Harald Onearm, who was revered by all modern highlanders! After the death of the aged Earl of Myraluka, the brave Harald had ensured the survival of his townsfolk by cutting a swath through the iron giants to a western port settlement – at the cost of his left arm. Though the seven-footer had kept the zweihander, having been strong enough to wield it one-handed for the remainder of his travels. It was largely the groups that Harald had led from those western shores which made it to southern Galbadia, the majority of them settling in Winhill and neighbouring villages. Harald himself went on to marry a western woman, and became one of the first foreigners to be accepted in the xenophobic town; his son was now standing before him!

Reinhardt had planned to send this pretender to Niflheim, but the realisation gave him a sudden change of heart, and he kicked the sword across the ground.

'Pick up your sword, Haraldson!' Reinhardt growled. 'Your father is waiting for you!'

The younger highlander took the bait. Reinhardt burst forward with supernatural speed the Garland could not match with his strange silver power, and it was much the same for the whirling redhead desperately trying to outmanoeuvre the wheeling Sleipnir. The instant after the highlander's fingers touched the sword hilt, Reinhardt crushed his skull with the same ferocity he had done to Ragnar's in his dream, and he lifelessly crumpled to the cobblestones.

Now, Reinhardt turned to the dancing woman. She was so intent on her private battle with the eight-legged steed that she did not even realise her comrade had fallen, and a squeaking moogle had now appeared externally to aid her. Suddenly, Reinhardt realised what had been causing those silver auras; the Allies had forged an alliance with the moogles of the Roshfall!

The redhead moved much like a ballerina, seamlessly weaving glancing blow after glancing blow on Sleipnir's hide as the moogle flew around his head, though parted from the moogle's boost her scimitar could not hope to penetrate that gleaming horse armour. Reinhardt looked at the highlander's body warily, and indeed another moogle had taken form above it. It flew askew as he struck at it with his hammer, fruitlessly firing white light at him from a wooden wand. Like in his dream, the spell simply bounced off, and his hammer connected on the second swing. The moogle did not stir after, one half of its entire body shattered.

Reinhardt was about to approach the redhead, but as it happened, he did not have to interfere. She chanced a sidestep, a fatal misstep, straight to Sleipnir's rear. With realisation, she dropped her scimitar, her wristblade extending with a quick movement and her right shoulder coming back in a rare telegraph as Sleipnir's four hind legs shot up. The hooves slammed into her torso, and those curious, barbed blades never found their intended target. Her ribcage pummelled as though by four sledgehammers, the redhead landed not far from where Reinhardt stood, attempting to draw a pained, laboured gasp.

Sleipnir's head had bowed while the GF was in motion, and as soon as its rear hooves were planted, it shot forward like a punter's favourite bursting from a stable. The moogle had been distracted by the horrific cracks of the woman's shattered ribcage just long enough to be impaled by the steel horn on Sleipnir's helm. Its squeak became a gurgle, and the creature went limp.

Did a wristblade qualify for its wielder's entry into Valhalla? Reinhardt was not sure, as it was not in the redhead's hand. He brought his hammer down contemptuously on her freckled face, before resting the familiar haft against his shoulder plate. Sleipnir returned to his side, and he pulled the twitching moogle from the horse helm's reddened horn, throwing it at the body of the other one.

Reinhardt looked longingly to the hovering Galbadia Garden over the high-rise buildings to the east. There was only one Garland remaining now, guarded by the Stormbringer, and his comrades were waiting for him.

(A/N: Hello from Cymru!

I'd planned on taking a long hiatus after the Timber arc, as it proven harder to draw it to a conclusion than I'd originally imagined. I know that I've said before I started working on this during the pandemic; I never imagined it would surpass 300k, and if I had known how much time I would need to invest then I might never have started writing it in the first place. Although this has become more of a hobby and less of an obsession in recent times, which has been a hard thing for me to get right since I started, so I might just carry on with it depending on how I feel.

On the whole, there seems to have been an influx of new interest in this, with lots of people reading from start to finish over the past few months. Sometimes it baffles me as to how this can amass nearly 6000 views with only a handful of users following or giving feedback. Although I'm more familiar with the fandom on here now, and I've realised that there's somewhat of a stigma against OCs and/or second-gen fics, at least when it comes to FFVIII. Please don't be afraid to let me know what you think, positive or negative.

I'm currently in the midst of a backpacking stint, living off some savings before going back to work later this month. Cardiff is a beautiful city, and I'm ashamed to admit that it's my first time here. On the whole, I'm very privileged to have been able to travel so much this year, and I'm not done yet, as will be returning to Munich next weekend; I loved the place when I went in February and I was determined to return and see some of the castles in wider Bavaria, chiefly Neuschwanstein.

I'm envious of any American friends and readers, as you guys are getting The Winter King about 4 months before it even airs in the UK. I have no idea why this is, because it is produced in Wales and based on the novels written by a British author. It must not suit ITV to launch it at the same time as MGM. Although season 2 of Wheel of Time aired a few days ago, which will go some way towards filling that void, and I was very pleased with the first 3 episodes.)