Chapter 72

Off the Grid

On what was the eighth day of her blissful vacation, Tyris and Ballad were driving down a winding country lane, well within the tranquil of the Hasberry, which would soon be the only landscape on the western continent untouched by fighting. The Garland leader was at the wheel of their rental car; Ballad had opted for gas rather than discounted electrical, as it was several hours to their destination. The screen inset into the dashboard marked their progress, and they had less than a half hour to go.

Ballad was in a sleeveless khaki top, dark grey cargo shorts and a black cap he had bought from the pompous, overpriced golf shop by their hotel. Tyris had her satin-black tank top, high cut denims, recently purchased anacondaur-skin boots and the slotted, wide-brimmed hat she had worn for most of the trip. They were both wearing sunglasses, modest pairs that did the job, and were both sufficiently protected from the sun's rays.

The last week had been heavenly, exactly what Tyris had always imagined a pristine vacation being as a child, and it was pastime she returned the favour. She had downloaded the main western BnB app to her phone on their final day, nervously waited for the bots to approve her awkward verification selfie, then gone searching. She wanted somewhere completely cut off from modern society and the war, finding a few candidates on the eastern coast, though as she had expected, they were not cheap. Property owners had not lowered their rates since Esthar had lost its hold on these lands, instead enjoying the reclaimed tariffs as boosted income.

The lodge Tyris really wanted had a panoramic view over the eastern cliffs and various hiking trails over the Hasberry, ideal for her training purposes. There were also paths down to fishing spots, with rods left for guests' use. Ballad had said he liked it; he had spent much of his childhood in a fishing town, and would be content to spend hours by the crashing waves. It had to be applied for, forcing Tyris to send a series of white lies to the owner.

Hi! My boyfriend and I are on leave from the army and would really like to spend a couple of nights at your property tomorrow and Friday! We hope to hear from you soon! :)

It was vacant all week and Tyris could only hope her lack of history on the app would make no difference. All Saronan properties had only recently been relisted since the country's liberation, and they always had reduced rates due to the unchecked wildlife population in that region, not least anacondaurs. She knew the coastal escapes were popular with soldiers. Maybe it was mentioning the army that forced the owner's hand. She was approved within minutes. With her winnings from the Eldertree, Tyris purchased a two-night stay at a rural cabin, and she still had several hundred gil remaining.

As they got within a klick of their cabin, the rental car's roof was down, and the sun was southeast in the cloudless sky. Ballad's ring weighed heavily against her chest, now hanging from a silver chain. Under her top, it was cool as it rested at her bosom. Tyris felt a pang of remorse as she glanced at Ballad, at the way the sun caught the contours of his tattooed triceps and shoulders as he held the wheel with his right hand, his left hanging out the open window. He caught the look and switched his hands on the wheel, so that he could grip her hand. She squeezed it as he took it.

'Something on your mind?' he asked softly.

'Always,' Tyris answered minimally.

Ballad was used to her taciturn nature by now, though they seemed to have established a precedent where she would only elaborate upon her feelings if she felt like it, and he had never once pressed her. Expressing herself was something Tyris had always had trouble with. Whenever she did, Ballad listened without interruption and his responses were generally well chosen – something of a luxury for one trained to act and give orders without thinking.

The road they were on gradually meandered from south to east, now a hundred metres parallel to the cliff side. The infrequent housing was on this thin strip, with driveways offshooting to the spacious housing. The hiking trails Tyris had coveted were on the other side of the road. Their property had a tree-lined drive leading to a two-door garage, which Tyris had been given the code to as part of the self-check-in process. They received the keys from the lockbox outside the front entrance and noted the cameras in the common areas.

The lodge was a couple of centuries old, reliably constructed from brick and mortar with interiors in cedar that were bountiful in the forests inland. The hall and lobby were inviting, tiled in porcelain with extravagant Kakashbaldi rugs. The farmhouse kitchen was fully equipped, with bottled mineral water as part of a welcome pack on the counter, and there was also a rectangular dining room with a planed rectangular table. The broad apex of the roof had been converted in recent generations to house three bedrooms, one of which was an ensuite. In Dollean fashion, a wraparound veranda encircled the rest of the house, leading to the backyard patioed neatly in beige, with raised flowerbeds and steps leading to a clear fishpond. The hand-crafted back gates adjacent to this pond led out to various manufactured trails leading to the advertised fishing spots.

'Well, what do you think?' Ballad asked her.

'I love it!' Tyris said happily. 'The pictures don't do the place enough justice!'

He nodded. 'Pricey, but it's not bad at all.'

The spacious lounge was home to another Kakashbaldi rug in a star-and-moon spangled design, with oiled cedar cabinets and bookshelves likely made to order from a mill they had passed. On the outside wall was a log-fed fireplace they certainly would not be needing this time of year. The first modern touch was a fifty-inch standing flatscreen television on its own cedar stand, with a DVD player and a satellite receiver. In the nearest corner to this was a radio and a vinyl player, along with a vintage hi-fi affixed to the wall. There were two armchairs around the fireplace, and two sofas arranged by the TV, all anacondaur-skin leather and draped in silk.

On the way, they had bought enough for the stay from a truck stop. Ballad went to bring the cool bag from the trunk and busied himself with arranging things in the fridge, leaving his phone on the counter.

Time for some minor adjustments! Tyris thought mischievously, snatching his phone and going back to the lounge. She removed the cords from the landline, the radio and the TV's satellite box, then took her own phone from her shorts pocket, having already switched it off on the way. She had seen a safe beneath the stairs to the bedrooms and put both of their phones inside, locking them with her own combination. Then she returned to the lounge, browsing the vinyls lined on one of the cabinets. She decided on a compilation by Nobuo Uematsu, kicking her boots off after sinking into one of the armchairs, while listening to the soothing violin intro of the song called Roses and Wine.

'Have you seen my phone?' Ballad asked as he walked into the room, a frown creasing his brow.

Tyris smiled. 'No phones, Ballad. No live TV. No news. No radio. After the bustle of the Eldertree, I wanted the short stay here to be the complete opposite, a blissful two days completely cut off from the Third Sorceress War and the outside world. We may never get another chance.'

It took a moment, but then Ballad smiled back.

'You know what?' he said. 'That sounds a great idea!'

And so that's how it went for the next forty-eight hours. The Planet continued to turn and they were wholly unconcerned about anything happening in any other part of it. While President Argus was murdered and Centra saw its first coronation for a century, Tyris and Ballad remained blissfully unaware. As Esthar surged across New Sarona's border, they remained uncontactable. Still, neither of them would trade those two days for anything, as everything would change for the two of them in the battles that followed.

It was mostly peaceful. They took turns cooking, eating, and drinking to the calming works of Uematsu. They spent the evenings watching DVDs. Tyris finished her mother's biography and, for want of anything else she thought interesting on the bookshelf, started reading it again. Ballad spent several hours fishing the first morning, giving Tyris ample time to practice flying, and he even opted to squeeze in a couple of hours before they checked out on the next.

She could always feel Ballad's ring. Yet there was never any behemoth in the room, even though her response to his proposal had been vague. She believed they needed to win the war, first. While Ultimecia loomed, Tyris could not even begin to fathom settling down in a place like this.

Even though this was something close to how she imagined a dream home, and it was close enough to the ocean to own a boat, too. Additionally, it gave her an idea as to what living with Ballad would be like. He had been institutionalised for more than half his life, and Tyris guessed his cleanliness stemmed from his instilled military attitude rather than just trying to impress her, but no manner of housekeeping seemed to be too trivial for him. The rural setting was not just a contrast to the holiday park they had just left, but also the polar opposite to the overcrowding and oppressiveness of Esthar City, where Tyris had been forced to spend most of her teenage years.

Thirty-six hours after the Restoration, they checked out of the lodge. Despite meeting only a locally employed cleaner, Tyris left the property a five-star review and hoped the host would give her the same. After all, she had reconnected everything the next morning and unplugging them had not expressly been against the house rules. They recovered their phones from the safe, but decided they would not turn them back on until they had checked in to a hotel in Jericho City – which they would decide on the old-fashioned way.

They were back on the road before noon. The car they had hired was from a chain, and they could return it to any branch in the country. The road parallel to the crags eventually branched inland, joining one of the main interstate roads that would lead to Jericho from the east. The only thing of note was a full-grown anacondaur glowering at their car from offroad, and Tyris held its stare until it passed from her view. Before long, the Tower of Owen appeared on the horizon.

'So,' she said. 'Do you believe the legends about the Tower of Owen?'

He glanced at her, then asked, 'That it used to hold up the Floating Continent, you mean?'

'Yeah.'

He nodded. 'I thought it was just a faerie tale, but the oldest maps of the Planet show the southern continent being half the size the Centran landmasses are today.' Then he glanced at her. 'And Cerberus told me it's true.'

Now, Tyris looked at him with surprise, swivelling so suddenly her seatbelt locked. 'Cerberus talks!'

Ballad laughed. 'Yeah! Though in his physical form, he tends to start a sentence with one head and finish with another!' Now he was grinning. 'He's offended by that, you know!'

Tyris felt herself reddening, feeling incredibly dense. 'It's just,' she started, looking back to the growing tower, 'Quetzal communicates to me through sensations and images, which I why I think Uncle Raijin didn't realise who I was on the Great Plains – as in, imprinting an image of a seven-year-old me on his mind would have only served to distract him, and he was so fired up, he wouldn't have taken notice. What I mean is, I assumed it was the same with Cerberus.'

Ballad just smiled now, keeping his eyes on the road, and it took some time for it to fade.

It only did when they saw what was unmistakably thick smoke on the horizon, coming from the high rises of Jericho as they too came into view. They realised what they were witnessing the same instant, as it was no ordinary fire. Circling the Tower of Owen was a glittering blue shape that could only be Tiamat, raining similarly coloured fire down onto the city in horrific volume.

'It's General Zebalga!' Tyris exclaimed.

Elsewhere, the city was under full-scale assault by Esthari forces, and it looked as though the west and north had already succumbed. Galbadia Garden could be seen hovering on the northern outskirts of the city, possibly the only reason Jericho was not completely surrounded. As it happened, in the forty-eight hours Tyris and Ballad had been cut off from the rest of the World, Ultimecia had taken the west by storm.

Tyris was out before Ballad, heading for the trunk. Though while she had gone for her old Esthari bodysuit, minus the armour, Ballad was getting his phone from his bag. Tyris stripped nonchalantly to her silk undergarments by the car, even as another two vehicles passed them, one of them dented. The skin-hugging suit was a reminder of her old life, and it, along with her gladiuses and knife, were the only possessions she had kept. Raikou would not have fitted in the trunk but would appear in her hand whenever she willed it.

As she kitted out, Ballad was reeling off information he had received via personal updates from Headmaster Biggs. The Empire had launched a two-pronged assault to capture Jericho and East Academy, with the eastern force led by Zebalga, and the western force led by Ultimecia herself. Ultimecia had almost pushed all the way to Yaulney Forest, seeking to block Galbadia's army from exiting the Monterosa. Galbadia Garden had been implored to abandon a hopeless flanking manoeuvre until SeeD returned to the western continent, in order to bolster the Saronans at Jericho, though with their only GF bearer absent, Garden was making little difference.

'Well, we're here now,' Tyris said. 'Holiday's over.'

'Damn right,' Ballad said, sheathing his own gladiuses.

She checked her own phone as Ballad got into his uniform, the Garland all-blacks with the dark grey tactical vest. He strapped his own gladiuses and his semi-automatic pistol to it. Tyris saw that Thalassa had sent her various things on messenger, scrolling past what looked like King Steiner's coronation moment between messages asking as to her wellbeing. She responded with a quick, 'Ballad and I are at Jericho.', before turning the phone back off.

'Should we use the car to get closer?' Ballad suggested.

It was not a bad suggestion, as their GFs would shield them from a sudden ambush, but Tyris shook her head.

'No, we can fly,' she said. 'We'll get a much better look at the city from above, and decide on the best insertion point from the east.'

Ballad looked at her incredulously. 'Cerberus can't fly!'

Tyris just smiled. 'I can.'

Closing her eyes, growing Quetzal's wings came much more naturally to her now. She heard Ballad gasp as they unfurled from her back. She opened her eyes to see him staring in awe.

'You're a goddess,' he whispered.

'Not quite,' she lessened. 'Have you got everything you need?' He nodded. 'Turn around, Trooper!'

'Yes, ma'am,' he said, and did an about face.

'Ramuh will catch you in his cloak if you fall,' she said in his ear, part satirically, and she saw the contours of a smile as he glanced over his shoulder.

Tyris encircled her arms around Ballad's torso, securing them with a hand on her wrist, then pressed herself tightly to him. She let Quetzal control the flight in this instant, as learning to carry passengers was not something she was prepared for, though with the addition of Ramuh this would only drain her power slightly. Three swift downbeats, and they were in the air. It must have been a humorous sight, the burly Garland leader dangling from her grip like hapless prey in the beak of a thrustaevis. And yet he did not seem afraid, and in those moments, she knew that Ballad would follow her to the end of the Jade Passage and all Seven Hells if she asked it of him.

'Ifrit fucking Siren!' Ballad swore after a time, no longer able to contain his emotions. 'Good job breakfast was at first light, huh?'

It turned out this was the best course, as they passed a Magitek blockade further down the road. From their vantage, Tyris could see the Esthari had almost encircled the city, and most of the explosions and glares of para-magic were coming from the central and northern districts. Galbadia Garden was now over the famous botanical Garden of Jadis, situated between the northern city centre and a residential district. What was nominally one of Jericho's major landmarks was shrouded in Tiamat's flames, with the draconic GF itself circling the engulfed palms like a giant carrion. Tyris stayed high for now, reassured that the bound Tiamat would not betray their position to Zebalga. They were well out of his sight, hovering as they got closer.

'Odin's down there!' Ballad said, then added furiously, 'He's riding down my people!'

Tyris realised he had taken binoculars from one of his utility pouches. Then Ramuh spoke to their minds.

That is not the Pale Rider! he said vehemently, each word like a thunderbolt. That is Reinhardt, riding Sleipnir like his own pet steed!

Tyris took Ramuh's word for it. While she could now fly like a hawk, she did not have the eyes of one. It was only as she got closer that she could see Sleipnir tearing through the twisting, cobbled pathways, his rider a hulking figure in gleaming, pale armour. Yet instead of Zantetsuken, the rider was swinging a hammer left and right, and the forked beard Tyris knew well trailed from that black, horned helm.

The gall!

Ramuh lanced those two words through her mind, and presumably Ballad's, too.

The burning botanical garden had a series of outer paths that looped upon one another, all eventually leading to the wider, central one. Sleipnir was broad enough to cover these outer paths, now lined with blue fire at either side, and it was all the Galbadians could do to dive into the aflame thickets as though dodging a speeding train. Now Tyris could see Reinhardt crush a black-uniformed Garland against a palm trunk, and he was riding down another as fireballs, lightning bolts and ice shards glanced harmlessly from Odin's armour. There were broken and aflame bodies all over the gardens.

'Garland doesn't stand a chance!' Ballad cried. 'I need to get down there, Tyris! Now!'

She knew Ballad was the only chance his compatriots had to hold the north. But taking him down there would give her position away to Zebalga. Tyris begun her descent now, heading for the most open area of the gardens, which was the plaza containing the fountain and statue of Sorceress Jadis that the gardens sprawled out from. A primal roar gave away Tiamat's pursuit, and she looked back to see Zebalga closing in on her. She would make it to the ground, but she knew the General would light up the whole area surrounding the fountain once he had realised who his quarry was.

Tyris levelled out to land in the circular plaza, though a rapid landing while carrying someone was another thing she had not been able to rehearse. 'Let me go!' Ballad ordered, as they were a couple of yards from the cobblestones. She did so without hesitation, and as Ballad's boots touched, he rolled forward as an expert parachutist would before coming to his feet again.

Before her own boots touched, she turned in Zebalga's direction. Tiamat was now hovering thirty feet above them, with a tell-tale flare ball growing forebodingly at his open maw. Zebalga was so focused on his prey that he was blind to Ramuh materialising behind them, and a multi-forked thunderbolt struck Tiamat full-on. With enraged roars coming from both Tiamat and the General, the gleaming dragon banked away.

'They'll be back!' Tyris warned Ballad. 'I'm going to lead Zebalga away!'

Ballad barred his gladiuses, looking in every direction for the glint of Odin's armour, though the sounds of fresh screams and para-magic outbursts told them Reinhardt was somewhere to the south. Only then did he look at Tyris, and she gently pulled his head toward hers for a kiss.

'Don't you even think about dying on me, Trooper!' she said.