Start Date: August 1, 2023

Windwillow

Final Fantasy V: War of the Crystals

Chapter Four: The Fire Crystal of Karnak

The Water Crystal of Walse was shattered, and two crystals remained. The next task was to find a way to Karnak's Fire Crystal, and the only hint that the Warriors of Light had to go on was a delirious statement from a soldier they'd never met for. Even so they gathered at the Walse Meteorite, which lay to the east of the now-submerged Tower of Walse, leaving Hiryu behind. Once they'd arrived Galuf suffered a sudden attack of memory that suggested to him that there really was a road ahead inside the meteorite, so the four warriors entered it to find a large chamber with a tile of fluctuating colors in the center of the room.

"Do you think it's safe, to step on it?" murmured Lenna. Bartz vehemently shook his head. There was no way he was going to hop inside a multicolored portal of death, especially when they didn't know where it led. So, Galuf grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hurled him onto the tile, whereupon Bartz promptly disappeared. "Oh, dear lord!" Lenna shrieked.

"You crazy old bat! Never do that again!" scolded Faris. She took her fist and battered him on the back of the head and grabbed him by the collar. "If you just blew up our friend, I am so going to rearrange your wrinkled old face!" she snarled. When Bartz reappeared and stepped out from the tile, Faris could see the satisfaction on Galuf's face. So, she smacked him again. "Don't act all cool! You could've killed him!" Faris growled. Galuf folded his arms and smiled.

"I knew all along! Never doubt your elders!" gloated Galuf. Before Faris could beat the snot out of him, Galuf approached the tile himself, examined it carefully, then hopped in, to everyone's shock. When he re-materialized he shook his entire body and groaned. "So it isn't fun, there, are you happy I did it too?" he muttered. Still woozy, he held his head and muttered a nasty word. It really hadn't been pleasant. "Either way, the portal leads to another meteorite. We ought to be safe, so... shall we?" Galuf tittered.

Although she was still miffed and more than a little suspicious Faris stepped towards the tile and, after gathering her courage, stepped into it and disappeared. Galuf soon followed, leaving Bartz and Lenna alone. Lenna stared at the portal, trembling, though when Bartz offered his hand she reluctantly took it and they jumped into the gate together.

Scene One

The inside of one meteorite led into the inside of a new one, just as Galuf said. Everything inside this one was identical to its cousin, so with nothing else to do they exited and found themselves in a wide, open plain, scarred by the massive meteorite's impact crater. On the plus side there didn't seem to be any monsters, though on the negative side it took four full days to reach the next town. Exhausted, Bartz's first impulse was to find the Inn and collapse in one of its nice, warm beds. Rather than finding the beds warm, however, the party encountered the majority of the town being on fire.

"Oh, my God! Everything's on fire!" gasped Lenna. After a bit of thinking, Galuf shook his head. Even though the town was on fire, nothing was burning down for some reason. Faris quietly approached one of the smaller fires and stretched out her hands, and closed her eyes. "Faris? What are you doing?" asked Lenna.

Ten tiny blue pin pricks, one on each of her fingers began to sparkle. From each of her fingertips a soft white light coated her palms as she lightly pressed down at the fire. From her hands a soft, bluish-white light pulsed from her palms and into the raging fire. Still, as it did nothing, she threw up her hands and shook her head. Then she thrust her hands forward and a massive gust of frost blasted at the fire, but it failed to extinguish it.

"Frost magic can't put it out... but it isn't burning anything. That means that this is more than magically created fire; it has to have been created by the Fire Crystal itself. Apparently the crystal's backfired - pardon the pun - and the after effects are that the entire city was lit on fire," said Faris with a shake of her head. Bartz angrily grit his teeth and screeched out an expletive.

"I am so done with this city! Let's stay somewhere else!" groaned Bartz shrilly. He felt a soft poke on his shoulder and turned to find a small army of soldiers, who had already subdued the others and now aimed their spears at his neck. Bartz growled, muttered another couple of foul words, and they were quickly taken into custody.

Scene Two

The four of them were captured, shackled, and led into a still-burning Castle Karnak. Like in the city itself several open fires could be found nearly everywhere. Eventually they were led into a dirty cell, sealed, and left to stew. Bartz, angry over losing his sword, slumped in the back with a huff. He'd been in this country for all of a day and now he was laying in jail at the mercy of his captors. Quite unsatisfactory, and he very loudly voiced his opinion.

"Give me back my sword, you jackasses!" screeched Bartz as he rattled the bars. From behind him Galuf quietly slumped in the corner of the room, and Faris and Lenna had taken the two bunk beds. Finally having had enough, Bartz stepped back from the bars, reared back, and slashed at them with two vacuum blades that bounced off, skidded along the walls, and nearly hit Faris and Lenna, whereby Faris beat the ever-loving snot out of him and threw him in a corner.

"If you ever do that again, I'm going to take your intestines and pull them up through your windpipe!" snarled Faris. As she threw Bartz to the floor and Lenna began to heal him, she tested the waters by attempting to heat the bars until they melted. They didn't, so she scowled and stomped back over to her bunk bed. Galuf lifted himself to his feet and approached the bars, but when he attempted to magnetize them he failed. "They have an anti-magic field here... dammit..." Faris moaned.

"Well, then what do we do?! I don't wanna rot in here for the next ten years!" screeched Bartz. With a sigh and a sense of resignation he leaned against one of the walls and closed his eyes. "I feel so angry I might blow up..." he muttered. He was promptly blasted from the now-destroyed wall and slammed his face into the opposite wall, as the dynamite blew open the space between two cells. "And your problem is?!" snarled Bartz as a lone figure emerged.

The man who appeared from behind the site of the explosion was an older one, dressed in a fine red tunic with pink trousers. He wore an old, ragged pair of glasses that Bartz assumed had been worn for quite some time, and he had a dashing white mustache. Upon seeing the carnage he'd wrought the old man seemed less concerned with nearly blowing Bartz up than ending up where he did.

"Damnation... I wasted my last stick of dynamite. Well, this sucks..." muttered the old man, shortly before Bartz took him by the collar, lifted him up, and slammed him against the wall. "And your problem is?!" the old man growled.

"The problem is that you nearly blew me up, you crazy old sack of bones! God!" Bartz roared. He angrily shoved the old man aside and dropped to his seat, petrified with fear. He had to have lost at least a couple of years off his lifespan after that little event. The old man simply dusted off his pants and adjusted his glasses. Even if he was angry at being treated like that, he had to admit that he deserved all the suffering the gods could give him.

"My name is Cid Previa... and I'm likely the reason that the lot of us are rotting down here. If I hadn't tried to turn off the damned machine... and that werewolf hadn't tried the same thing... you folks would likely be drinking at the pub right 'bout now... Well, whatever's left of the pub, it's been a while since I last checked..." said Cid glumly. From atop her bunk bed, Faris silently shut her eyes tight before vaulting off and landing right next to Cid, her eyes narrowing and her teeth gritting.

"I read about you in Walse. You're the one that created those infernal machines that are breaking the crystals open. Cid Previa... I want an explanation, now, why you came up with something so God damned destructive," growled Faris. With a sigh, Cid leaned against the bars and muttered a few unprintable words. It was his fault, and he did owe them an explanation.

"When I saw the fires in town I deduced that the Fire Crystal had begun to malfunction. So, I went to Queen Karnak and asked her to turn off my machine. I can't tell you her response because a lady is present. So, I sneaked onto the Fire-Powered Ship and met some weird werewolf who also wanted to shut down the machine for some reason. We got caught and locked up together, but the werewolf managed to escape from his cell somehow... The Queen's gone off her rocker..." moaned Cid. Lenna quietly rose from her seat on the bunk bed and approached Cid, laying her hand on his shoulder. As he startled, she smiled at him and sighed.

"Don't beat yourself up about it, Sir Cid. The King of Walse had the same reaction when we told him to shut off the Water Crystal's augmentation machine... and we had similar results when we tried to keep the Water Crystal from shattering. Two of the four crystals have been shattered, and we've come here to stop the Fire Crystal from joining their fates..." said Lenna quietly. His teeth gritted, Bartz bowed his head and slammed his fist into the wall.

"Everyone's so damned entranced by the machine's results that they can't even entertain the idea that they're screwing everyone over. That old hag is letting her own hubris cloud her judgment..." growled Bartz. From outside the bars, Bartz heard a soft rapping and turned his attention to the jail's cells. Outside the cell stood Karnak's chancellor, surrounded on each side by two of his guards. "Great, it's you. Get us the hell out of here!" Bartz snarled. The chancellor sighed and bowed his head. With everything going wrong, being insulted by a criminal was not pleasant. Still, he turned to Cid with desperation on his face and stretched out a hand to the cell's bars.

"We have... a situation. It's... well, damn it, I'll have to say it: The Fire Crystal on the Fire-Powered Ship has begun to overload. I came to ask for your help," begged the chancellor. Cid only gave him a deep look, one filled with contempt.

"I warned you, you damned fool! What do you expect me to do about it?" scolded Cid. The chancellor swallowed hard and moaned, his own guilt overwhelming him. He was right; Cid had issued a plain warning that they disregarded, and as it turns out it was a bad gamble.

"You know how to shut down the machine. Please, do so! We'll send as many soldiers with you as you want! Please!" protested the chancellor. Disgusted, Cid stepped back from the bars. Slowly he eyed the Warriors of Light, and even for an untrained amateur he could feel the magic oozing from their bodies. Throw as many soldiers as you liked against the defenses on the ship and you'd still fail. He turned to the chancellor with a grimace and jabbed his thumb back at the party.

"Free them. I need them," said Cid plainly. The chancellor was taken utterly aback, and the sheer anger on his face said as much. As he fumed, however, Cid testily folded his arms over his chest and sized the chancellor up. "You have a problem with that?" he asked tersely.

"These fiends were seen coming out of the same meteorite as that werewolf did! They're clearly in collusion with him!" protested the chancellor. The look on Cid's face quickly changed into outright rage, and he slammed his fists against the bars.

"He wanted to shut the damn thing off too, you stupid old codger! I'll repeat myself one more time: Free them, or you can just take your baton and stick it up your ass!" growled Cid. Although he could see the reluctance on the chancellor's face, Cid watched as he unlocked the door and threw it open. "Good boy. You can be taught. Give 'em back their stuff and we'll be out of here in a jiffy," he said flatly. He turned to Bartz and the others and flashed a thumbs-up. "Meet me at the Fire-Powered Ship. It's moored down south. We ain't got time to dawdle, so let's make it quick..." Cid said testily.

Scene Three

Once aboard the Fire-Powered Ship, the party was met by Cid. He unlocked the door leading down into the depths of the ship. Bartz testily noted that he wasn't joining them, but Lenna convinced him to let it go. Deep below the bridge was a massive complex of tubes, wires, and other machinery that led to the machine charging the Fire Crystal. After traveling through several maintenance chambers and air ducts they exited into a large cabin, where four monsters awaited them.

The essence of flame made manifest, a Fire Elemental was what you'd expect: a warped creature made of pure fire. Bartz and Faris promptly engaged two of the elementals and Galuf stretched out his hands to summon Shiva. Although she appeared and used her frost magic to extinguish three of the elementals, the final one had circled around and towered over Lenna. With no time for Bartz and the others to react it seemed a fatal circumstance. As the elemental reared back to strike, however, Lenna stretched out both hands and touched the monster as if it weren't made of fire and pressed down with her fingers.

While at first nothing happened, Lenna's fingers began to dig into the elemental's body and pressed on through its torso, and from the point of impact the monster began to shrivel and die, a massive amount of steam pouring from the elemental as it was dissolved into nothing but gas and steam. In the aftermath Lenna stood with her hands outstretched, water dripping from her fingers along with a thick curtain of steam. Before Bartz could react, Lenna smiled and clapped her hands together cheerfully, then pointed to the crystal shard embedded in her choker.

"The Water Crystal spoke to me back at the tower and gave me a gift! Now, I can fight with you guys, and I won't be a burden!" beamed Lenna. Bartz and the others stared on in mute silence, leaving Shiva to flash a cheshire grin before disappearing in a storm of snowflakes. Lenna turned her smile to Bartz, though when their eyes met the both of them jolted and fell in line, becoming just friends again.

Just past the door where they'd fought the Fire Elementals, the Warriors of Light found themselves in what appeared to be a massive engine room, filled with pipes and other machinery, and a large and bulky machine behind Queen Karnak that they assumed to be an engine. She was a slim and seductive young ruler. Her long hair, green as emerald, flowed down her back and she wore a set of violet robes that revealed her rather gifted body.

"Your Highness, please step aside and let us through! We've come to shut down the machine!" Lenna pleaded. She received no reply. The more she stared at the queen, however, the clearer it became: those eyes didn't belong to the queen, or any human for that matter. "Who are you?! Answer me!" insisted Lenna forcefully. The queen simply curled her mouth into an unnatural sneer, one that proved she had stepped beyond being human.

"I will not be denied. You chosen four can go do nothing!" cackled Queen Karnak.

She stretched out her hand and raised it up, then cast it to the floor. From her fingers a mass of fire emerged, and from that fire a shape began to manifest. Best described as a colossal mass of fire, it was an amorphous construct that warped between several forms varying from a human to a whirlwind to, oddly enough, a large hand. Queen Karnak's body seized up suddenly, then fell limply to the floor of the engine room as the Liquid Flame loomed. The Liquid Flame drew back its limbs and hurled them forward, sending a wide wave of red-hot fire zooming towards the Warriors of Light. Lenna and Faris exchanged a quick glance, then threw their hands out together. Lenna's water first struck the flames and turned them to steam, and then Faris' ice froze it solid.

Bartz frantically drew his sword and shut his eyes tight. Focusing all of his senses he attempted to lock on to the Liquid Flame's location. He got his answer when the Liquid Flame emerged in the form of a massive hand and prepared to engulf him. Without delay Bartz took his sword in both hands and swung down as strong as he could muster, a sharpened vacuum striking the hand and splitting it into a sea of flames. The fire began to reform into a solid shape, but before it could do so it became frozen over in a huge mass of ice, sent by Shiva to extinguish the Liquid Flame. Bartz turned his attention to Shiva, who again burst into snowflakes and vanished, though this time Galuf grabbed his face in his hand and stumbled back limply, only barely managing to right himself. Summoning Shiva twice in such a short period had sapped much of his magical power.

"Are you going to be alright or will you just keel over and die?!" snapped Bartz. Galuf only gave him a foul glance and wiped the sweat from his brow before presenting his middle finger. "You crazy old-" Before Bartz could move towards Galuf, Lenna grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, which brought him back to his senses. He took in a deep breath and turned his attention to the room past the engine. "I'm guessing that we're going to find the crystal behind that door... assuming it's still intact..." he muttered wearily.

Scene Four

The Fire Crystal was indeed beyond the engine room, in a standard crystal chamber with a notable exception: several large vents attached to the wall that were situated around the crystal, naturally the machine used to augment it. When they arrived two of the vents had begun to converge on the crystal, and Bartz turned his attention to a Karnak soldier in the back of the room, engulfed in black fire, having pulled down the lever to activate the machine. Bartz and Faris dashed towards the crystal, but were unable to stop the first two vents from connecting to the Fire Crystal.

"Hell's bells! We're too late!" Galuf cursed angrily. From behind the vents, in the back of the room, a large explosion blasted through the room and a shaggy, humanoid wolf landed next to the other Warriors of Light. Although he wasn't armed, it seemed he didn't need a weapon to hold his own in combat. The werewolf turned his eyes to Galuf and they widened, a wide grin forming on his face.

"Lord Galuf! You're here?! Please, help me save the crystal!" begged the werewolf. Before Galuf could even react with astonishment, however, the final vent began to close in to the crystal. Putting himself in the way, the werewolf grappled onto the vent and held it back with all his might, and turned a desperate eye to Galuf. "Hurry! I'll keep this from holding you back! Get going before this all blows to Kingdom Come!" he said, straining from the sheer force that the machine was applying to him.

"Why are you doing this?!" choked Lenna, though before she could reach for the werewolf she felt the strong hold of Bartz's arms as they closed around her tightly. "Bartz! What are you-" Bartz shushed her as he laid a finger to her lips, which silenced her. Bartz vaulted high above the vents and dashed towards the hole the werewolf had created, only to fall into another abyss that formed beneath his feet. The werewolf struggled with all his might, but as the vent began to close he was forced into oblivion with only a single wish.

Lord Kelger... Forgive my weakness! I entrust the job to those four warriors!

Author's Notes

Here we come to Lenna's upgrade: water-elemental magic. It isn't anything terribly powerful or such, but with this addition Lenna's combat abilities have increased. Even so, don't expect her to be throwing out giant torrents of water or anything. She's still mainly a support character. However, it pairs nicely with Faris' frost and lightning magic. So... No, she doesn't get to wreak much havoc, but it's nice to have her as a last resort. Next chapter is Faris' upgrade. It may draw from an unusual source, since it's technically based off the Water Crystal's jobs, but none of the Fire Crystal jobs appealed to me for a power-up. As usual, rampant disregard for canon, but you probably already knew that if you've read anything I've written...