Filling In The Blanks
Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy IX or any of its characters.
Chapter 116: Play with Fire
Beatrix tried to shake the disapproving glare that was drilling into the back of her head. No matter what direction she moved in, the feeling of fire always followed, slicing straight through her thick, chestnut hair and stabbing right into her skull. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up – like she should be on guard, even in Madain Sari.
But in reality, it was just Steiner.
His jaw was set and his dark charcoal eyes were nearly hidden under the heavy frown of his eyebrows, black and angrily set, lilted over his eyes. His hand hovered constantly at the hidden dagger by his side and she thought with a chastise and a bit of wry that he might fling it out and stab her with it just for revenge.
Nobody was happy with her decision. What made it all the worse was that she couldn't tell with the little amount of time they had to analyze the situation if this was what Zidane really wanted. She knew that she would have a full understanding once they were out from behind the walls, but by then all of her big talk would force them to keep going, even if, on the off chance, he was terrified of venturing out.
The only other person who walked with any kind of normalcy was Vivi. He pulled his hat tightly down on his head, the edges faded and dusty from the hot sun and the endless amount of sand, but the tilted spring in his step, loyally by Zidane's side, told her that he was hardly surprised that a decision like this was made. He was the only other besides Zidane who was quiet through the whole argument.
It was something she really, truly admired in the young black mage. The trait had just blossomed in the last few months, and she watched the fear melt away from him, replaced by the complete trust in his comrades that they would make the best decisions for him and the rest of the team. While everyone always had the idea that the Dreamers demanded the personalities of leaders, Vivi excelled at being a follower and supporter – she thought it made him fearless, and it made him level headed, and it made him stronger.
She lingered in the back of the group, walking slowly and feeling every step. This idea would solely be on her if something were to happen, and there was a mild seed of doubt that churned in her stomach as she walked. It had her right hand resting on the hilt of her sword at her hip as she moved, feeling reassured as it thudded against her leg. A tree frog (though where the trees were for them to hide in was beyond her) croaked long and loud, piercing the sound of the dusty footsteps of her comrades.
Nevertheless, her shoulders remained squared and she strode proudly along, the only buzz of irritation coming from Steiner's deathly gaze behind her. As the group in front of her pooled at the entrance of their safe haven, she passed Zidane, leaning to her left so she could mutter in his ear.
"Alright kid, here's your chance. Don't fuck this up for me."
"Yes, sir," he muttered back with a light lace of humor on his tone. His seemingly uncaring attitude did more than she thought it would to raise her mood.
"Standard formation," she said, "just as we used to practice. We'll start with that and see how well we remember – how well it still works. Holler if something needs to change, signal if we're too close to the city."
The groups stationed near the entrance to the ruined city tilted their heads in silent curiosity. There was a group leaving? During designated team-building time? And that group leaving had Zidane in it…
They did nothing to even try to hide their stares.
"I hope you know what you're doing," Steiner griped at her, hand still ghosting his unseen dagger.
She flipped her hair over her shoulder, stealing one last glance at Zidane's mild grin for confidence in the situation – in her decision, "I'm flattered you think so highly of me, Adelbert."
His jaw dropped, but he hurriedly shut it again. Though the damage was already done, she had seen his flabbergasted expression at being called by his first name – he knew she was angry at him for having no trust in her – even after all they had been through!
Zidane scratched his chin, feeling sure and unsure at the same time. The expression of dread and over exaggerated agony never quite left Dagger's face, and that tidbit of a detail he had noticed did nothing to help his nerves. He'd rather not be fighting with the girl if he was going to die taking a leap of faith. But he ignored the urge to reach out to her and instead turned to Vivi.
The mage stared up at him with golden eyes, questioning, but sure.
A smirk blossomed over his face as he held his hand out for a low-five, "Ready to kick some ass, Vivi?"
He nodded back at Zidane and slapped his hand. Their gloves met in a low thump – less satisfying than the smack the gesture usually gave, but the genome would take the returned slap as a boat of confidence from the mage. If Vivi wasn't afraid, he hadn't any reason to be.
Beatrix puckered her lips as she glanced back at the group. Steiner stood loyally to her right while Dagger fell back to her left. Vivi and Zidane took the middle with Amarant, Quina and Eiko flared out, but still behind them. Blank and Freya brought up a tight-knit rear, trusting the rest of the company to be their eyes on the road ahead, unable to see past the heads of their friends.
She must have been staring at them longer than she thought, because Zidane finally straightened and unsheathed his dagger, "Well if it's any consolation to anyone, I'm ready to go."
"Right," she nodded, turning and sucking in a breath. "Let us go."
She took off, not bothering to look and see if anyone was behind her or if they had decided to let her run into the open wild by herself, easy to pick off by natural or reoccurring enemies.
Steiner would only grudgingly admit that he wasn't surprised nothing happened on their way to Conde Petie. Beatrix usually got her way about these types of things – there would be no real danger until they were scattered in the city on a training run that shouldn't have existed.
Though while he was angry at being overruled, he did take some comfort in the fact that Beatrix wasn't stupid, nor would she throw away their lives just to be right. If she thought something was wrong, she would face the music and turn to retreat.
Their formation was a little shaky. Eiko called for a stop to switch with Amarant – Zidane's inconsistent speeds left her vulnerable to running into him if he were to abruptly stop, while Amarant could very easily just pick up the blonde and keep going.
Blank had angrily called for a stop as well. They batted around where to put him for over a half-hour because his eyesight still swam a little bit from the long months of petrification. Ultimately, though it was risky and Steiner hated to do it, he switched with Blank, pulling up the rear with Freya. That was a stamina based position, and for the last long stretch of their race the Bermecian could hear Steiner puffing next to her in all of his clanky armor.
But, Zidane himself had no complaints during the run. Every time they stopped his legs were shaking and he spent a lot of time with his hands leaning on his knees, but he never asked to quit, turn around, or take an extra break. He kept up with them, and seemed to still be surviving. Half of their fears had already been disproved by the time they made it to Conde Petie.
They heard the constant 'rally-ho!' even outside the city, which gave them confidence that everything would be okay on the inside. Beatrix stopped them behind a cluster of large boulders, just skirting the bazaar tents where they had snuck the entire resistance out. She turned towards the others, exhilaration fueling her now.
"Break off into teams of two and three. Stay in line of sight of two other groups the entire time. Stay quiet, use your skills… we'll be fine."
Zidane paired off with Quina and Dagger; Steiner stuck with Amarant and Eiko; Freya and Vivi and Beatrix and Blank. Each team was given a shop to steal some supplies from; Beatrix couldn't ignore the opinions of her team forever – she gave Zidane's group food duty – the least risky supply to steal. She shot the genome a glare when he opened his mouth to whine, so he shut it promptly and instead shot a grin at Dagger. Most of her fear must have been about the run because she shot him a shaky smile back. Both Beatrix and Steiner assumed her request to pair with him had to do with hovering around him with white magic. Nobody was going to complain.
"Each team will break off, one at a time," Dagger instructed, pointing to Beatrix and Blank as the round one candidates.
They exchanged a quick glance before letting their fingertips graze the tips of the brown grass littering the dirt around the boulders as they half-stood, slinking off towards the bazaar in an attempt to find the best way to sneak in.
She watched in mild dismay as two of her most beloved friends wandered off into unknown territory, but only allowed herself a moment of worry. She queued off the next time, and then the next after that, until her, Zidane and Quina were the only ones left.
"Quina glad friends got food run. Quina love food runs."
"Not all for you though, I'm afraid," Zidane joked with a smile. His ease made Dagger even more nervous. He shouldn't have been that laid back.
"Ready?" she asked, pulling in a sharp breath though her teeth. The two of them glanced at her in mildly suspicious confusion.
"Everything okay?"
Her expression soured. "You should be a lot more worried than you are now."
He let out a chuckle that made her want to punch him in the mouth. "Worry makes for mistakes," he commented before shooting out from behind the boulder and following the rest of his team's footsteps. Quina huffed quietly behind him, leaving Dagger bewildered behind the stones.
"Wha- hey!" she whispered loudly, before coyly jogging after them. "Useless bunch of boys," she grumbled, hustling to catch up to them.
Dagger watched the muscles in Zidane's arms move as he pulled himself up onto the ledge of a wooden booth. He didn't stop to help his comrades, and if Dagger had been less frustrated with the way the entire day was going, she would have been impressed with how smoothly Quina hopped up onto the booth using some stacked crates to the side of them.
The blonde glanced back to make sure Dagger was behind them, and she took an odd amount of pride in the fact that he hadn't waited to make sure she could get up; he already had enough faith that she could do plenty on her own. That sort of chivalry would have been wasted on her – not to mention, annoying.
She let him take the lead as he stopped just before walkways and bowing, cloth banners to assess the route that would suite their entire party the best. Anyone could tell that Quina wasn't the most balanced of the elites, and both his and Zidane's weight would be a problem for anything too weak. With a bit of amazement, she watched his mind open up with possibilities everyone had shot down in the past couple of months. The way his eyes flickered across every path ahead of him, and the way his lips twitched when he came to a final decision – it brought him to life again.
This was the Zidane she knew.
His mind had been itching for exercise nearly as much as his body. There was an unfortunate pang of sadness when she watched the frustrated expressions flounder his good mood as she realized just as fast as he that his mind was quicker than his body. At some point in the last three years, it had been the other way around.
They were making good time as they passed along buildings now, instead of the booths at the edge of town. Zidane leapt from one to another, seeming to enjoy the way his feet landed softly but sturdily on the stone tops. Quina's tongue wagged at the thought of normalcy again.
And Dagger?
Be it paranoid or not, she had a bad feeling in her gut.
The one disadvantage to being on the food supply run was that their market was at the center of Conde Petie, and the most digested traffic route through the entirety of the town. She ran a gloved hand through her hair, dusting the raven locks with specks of sand. If Kuja's forces had been through the city at all, it was relatively likely that there would be posters with their faces, people who would recognize them and spies.
She found herself scanning the area, searching frantically for the two other groups she wondered if Zidane remembered they were supposed to stay in line's eye of. They would be hiding, harder to see…
"There!" she nearly gasped to herself. Quina jerked his head back to her, but said nothing. Zidane seemed distracted with calculating the likelihood of getting into the market unnoticed.
Beatrix and Blank hung over the side of a building, peering into an alley way just to the right of the weapons shop. Blank gave a little wave of his hand and an exhilarated I-got-what-I-wanted-today type of grin. Further to her left, she spotted Steiner hoisting up a bag of lifted armor from Amarant – where had they gotten a bag that quickly? – while Eiko, rather obnoxiously yet oddly cute, distracted the workers inside the shop, asking them all sorts of history questions about Conde Petie and the surrounding area. If there was one thing the dwarves loved talking about, it was their homeland's history. She was strategically careful enough to steer the conversation as far from Madain Sari as she could. Dagger would know – she could hear the girl from a block and a half up the road.
"Are you ready, Dagger?"
She whirled back around, hair smacking her in the face as she stared at Zidane. His eyes sparkled in the hot sun.
"What did you –" she began to ask what the plan was, because she hadn't been paying attention at all, but he simply grinned at her and leapt from the building. What he was aiming for or what opening he saw, she had no idea. Strangling her own cry of worry, she followed him blindly, Quina leaping after her. She hoped being in the middle would help guide her seemingly sporadic movements.
When she landed, her palm coming down firmly to stabilize her movements, Zidane was already off again. He had veered around the corner of the alleyway and, if she remembered correctly, probably straight into the food market.
She bit her tongue so hard she tasted copper as Quina's heavy presence behind her kept her going. She could feel where he was aiming his body weight – which way he was planning to go; she stayed close to him so she could continue that feeling.
Hoping she was mirroring Zidane's hazy plan, she rounded the corner and lurched for the market, hoping that their suspiciously quick movement was fast enough to avoid attention on the street. But as she was stepping, her feet so close to the plaster-like tile that made up the market's flooring, an alarm rose in the air.
It sounded nothing like any noise she had heard in Conde Petie before. It was blaring and angry – a technology too rich to have always been in the lacking city.
She knew immediately…
It was a Lindblum alarm.
They had set off plenty of the sirens in the city in their time there, where even resistance members in hiding would snap their heads up, staring around wide-eyed for a moment, heart in their throat and worried that they set off the alarms. But rather, they were so raucously screechy that no matter who in what part of the city triggered the alarm, all would hear.
This was a new edition.
Kuja had brought soldiers – real soldiers with real motives, unlike the lackluster personality of the soldiers who ran the prison they were held in nearly two years ago – into the city, and with it: the technologies to find resistance members.
Perhaps that discovery of their movements in the forest – the ship that had hovered so close to the ground that Dagger and Steiner could hardly hear themselves think – had Kuja insisting that they were here on the Outer Continent. She hated that he guessed right.
So they were here now, in the city. And it was in that moment that she knew all of them understood. One of the groups had been spotted. And like every fretful time the alarms sounded in Lindblum, she whipped her head around, tendrils of hair slapping her in the face, hoping she hadn't been the reason for the alarm.
As all of this was happening, seemingly slow motion in her head, her legs were still propelling her forward into the shop. Quina was still behind her, bumping forward with a heavy sigh to his breath. She was about to stumble into the sstore that would no doubt be on full alert – the center of the city – the most highly trafficked place in all of Conde Petie. What would make her think that a soldier or spy or poster wouldn't be in the building she was currently tumbling into.
And just as her thoughts spiraled out of control and into despair, a hand yanked her down clumsily from the shoulder. She collapsed under the quick pressure, Quina toppling on top of her. Her breath was forced from her lungs and it took everything she had to bite her tongue instead of wheeze air back in.
Her unfocused eyes found Zidane, his face more serious than she had seen it in a long time. His hands were out in front of him, balancing his crouched position and his fingers were spread, almost like he was flexing them out of attentiveness. His sharp, sapphire eyes saw between the lucky load of delivery crates the blonde had dove behind, somehow effectively hiding them from view.
She followed his line of sight, stomach clenching in a painful twist when she spotted the armor-clad soldiers turning this way and that, yelling commands at each other. The dwarves scurried about like tormented ants, hating the noise and hating the disruption of their day. If there was one positive to this catastrophe, it seemed to be that the natives were not interested in seeking out the ones who triggered the alarm – the ones they no doubt had been warned to watch for.
There was yelling on the streets, chaos ensuing as soldiers around the city came pouring out. The market, as inconvenient as it was to shoppers, had three-way traffic from the first floor, plus the exit to another part of the city up the stairs. That meant they saw nearly every single one of Kuja's men pass through, going back and forth in an attempt to find what they were looking for.
She suddenly remembered Eiko and her heart flared in ache. That girl had been inside the weapon shop – what if someone had spotted her and taken her already? The rest of her team was near, but perhaps not enough.
Dagger strangled a cry and reached out to Zidane, "We have to find the others," she whispered hoarsely, dread filling her stomach.
"There's no way to make it out of here undiscovered," he answered, though his eyes didn't reach her, "This place is a time-bomb waiting to happen."
"Quina be distraction!" he declared, pushing off of the ground with his large hands.
"No! We are not sacrificing anyone! We are a team, and we're staying to – dammit!" the frustration was clear on Zidane's face. Quina had already pranced in the middle of the market yelling loudly. Soldiers either ignored him or were stopped annoyedly.
"Alarm is what?! What is alarm!?" he played dumb, pretending that the loud noise had ignited a ridiculous amount of fear in his persona. As oblivious as Qus actually were, they knew that Kuja thought even worse of them, and they rather liked using that little fact to their advantage.
His panic seemed to create an entirely new cycle of panic for the dwarves, as their movements increased, chaos continued to rise, and they began to scream questions as well.
The market suddenly exploded in noise – soldiers yelling, Quina yelling and the dwarves yelling, all bumping into each other and trying to dodge one another. Their friend purposely stood largely in front of the door they had just come in, trying to block soldiers from running out that way.
"That's our exit," Zidane pointed out, leaping out from behind the crates. He had Dagger's hand in his, determined not to let her get lost. "Keep your head down!"
"Got it!" she responded, adrenaline kicking in.
They skidded out into the dusty roads of Conde Petie, more chaos lining the streets. She tried to scan rooftops and keep her eyes averted all at the same time, hoping that they weren't causing too much trouble – praying they would find their team.
"Did we have a meeting point in case things went south?!"
"I think Beatrix was pretty confident it wouldn't go south!"
"Nobody else was – why didn't anyone establish one!?" he yelled rhetorically. She barely heard him above all the shouting.
"It's him! It's the dreamer!" Suddenly, there were shouts from in front of them. A collective wave of people began turning around in front of them, and Dagger's widened in poorly hidden fear.
Weapons were drawn. A man only a few feet in front of Zidane shoved the remaining two people in the way out of his path and unsheathed his sword, hustling towards the blonde. He drew his dagger and the two metals clashed.
She wasn't ever sure what it was. If it was all of the chaos or her worry that had churned astonishingly quick into adrenaline, or if it was the call of recognition towards Zidane – his posters were the easiest to decipher after all, many of the dreamers could describe him in detail – or maybe the first clash of weapons.
Whatever it was, it sparked her power almost instantly. Before she even knew what she was doing, her hands were glowing and she was simultaneously giving away her identity as well. There was no time to ponder that, however, as the energy began ripping against her limbs, heat crawling underneath her skin.
She wanted to scream, but she grit her teeth and her eyes lit up, seemingly from the inside out. They shone light brown in front of the brightness. Magic and make believe swirls came from nowhere and she had to admit the power felt so much stronger so close to Madain Sari. Summoning marks scattered along the ground, underneath the feet of anxious men and wild enemies.
Shooting from these marks was Leviathan, his long whiskers quaking as he let out a shrieking roar. Immediately, she clapped her hands together, her staff in between them, and felt the magic creeping up the weapon. In almost an instant, she had summoned the energy up past the overwhelming struggle for dominance with the eiodolon.
Leviathan gave another cry, his eyes turning a piercing white. Hollering turned into screaming and Dagger was vaguely aware of Zidane's hand clasping her arm tightly. Out from thin air the water droplets began, forming faster and faster before the tidal wave was above them, around them, engulfing everything.
She let out one final push of magic, draining all of that pent up energy as Leviathan released the tidalwave attack, pushing all of his energy into the one spell. He gave a great call as the water fell around him, eating up the last of his physical presence in Gaia, dissipating him into water.
It would have been a beautiful sight – one of the fastest summons Dagger would do in her whole life. She hadn't really used her skills, and the strain of no practice, plus fear and proximity from Madain Sari surely affected the way she summoned. But this – this was power. This was Leviathan already knowing what he was supposed to do before she had completely drawn him into this world. This was an eidolon who recognized her as a summoner for the first time, seeing the world before he was a part of it and understanding why she had called him before she asked what she would of him.
He collected nearly half of that tidal wave before she even asked him to. He saw the trouble. He was made aware of his duty.
And just as fast as he came, he went again to conserve her energy, to give her time to digest what was going on – to get away from the attack she had just released, basically on top of herself. There was no controlling the water once it was released – he knew she'd need all the time she could get.
"Jump!" Zidane was shrieking, shaking her. "Dagger you have to listen to me now!"
She was coming back into focus, descending from her high of that summon, truly in awe of what had happened. It had never been that easy – it had never been –
"Dagger!" The sudden rush of water spritzed her back to life better than Zidane's voice.
Horrified screams came from all around and she released with a snap that the genome's attacker was gone. They were struggling, all hoping to run toward the streets ahead of them. The first waters from the tidal wave were breaking, releasing into the city.
The city.
What had she done?
"NOW!" he yelled, giving one final heave of her arm and successfully toppling her over the edge with him. They plummeted the two-story drop to the level of the city below them. A dirt path that lead to more housing and more shops that she had probably never explored in her time there. Why hadn't she? Now they wouldn't be the same again.
But before they landed, breaking their shins and knee caps and bones from the long fall, the water swept them up, effectively keeping them level with the rail they were just standing next to.
She barely took in a breath before the water rushed all around her. The waterfall was the only thing she could hear, the swirl of a jostling wave the only thing she could see. Her head felt heavy, she felt dizzy. There was no air – no relief from the constant push and pull of the angry tide around her. She couldn't even feel Zidane's hand on her arm anymore.
Blank was just scurrying back up the side of a building when the alarms sounded. He rolled his body over the edge, staring up at the sky as Beatrix leapt to alert next to him. He listened to the noise, paralyzed with the question of what exactly it was for nearly ten seconds before Beatrix's shuffling finally snapped him out of his thoughts.
"I can't see anyone anymore!" she whispered fretfully, sounding not at all like the sassy knight Blank had a tendency to clash with.
His brow creased as he rose from his lying position, realizing that he was still out of breath and he had been lying there for a lot less time than he thought.
"Who set off the alarms?!" she questioned to nobody in particular. Her eyes were wide and she had pulled all of her hair to one side as she peered, barely hiding herself, over the edge of the building.
"Up there! I see someone!"
"Fuck!" Blank called out, frustration finally moving him. He slapped his hands down on Beatrix's shoulders and heaved her back, effectively rising her to her feet but nearly knocking himself over in the process. "We have to get out of here!"
"We can't leave when we don't know where everyone else is!"
"They're certainly going to leave!" he barked at her in disagreement. "We can look on the way!" He unsheathed his weapon, chalking her scatter-brained thoughts and words up to feeling like it was her fault for dragging everyone to the city.
The redhead didn't blame her at all. It was coincidental of time and place. If they had picked a different day, a different point in the day, a different town or location to practice and infiltrate – all of it could have happened there too. It might not have, but it could have, and that was what made him forcefully shut out all quick accusations his mind was trying to press out.
He began to run, not bothering to see if Beatrix was going to follow him. He couldn't stop her if she wanted to do something different.
But he heard her heave up their bag of stolen weapons onto her shoulder and break into a soft sprint behind him, the metal clanking together behind her silent form. If it were just them, it would be nearly silent as they made their run, but the sound of soldiers and people on the streets were intensifying.
And suddenly, it was upon them.
Men were climbing up the sides of the buildings and arrows were being shot blindly onto rooftops.
"Where should we go?!" he yelled to her, slamming his foot into one man's chest, sending him spiraling over the edge again.
"Just out! If we can make it out of here, we can try to regroup where it is not so populated!"
"Sounds like a plan if we make it that far," he retorted almost sarcastically.
She drew her sword just as he drew his dagger, and they hung purposefully in the middle of the buildings, jumping early and praying it was a longer jump to not fall short. They didn't want anyone's hands close to their ankles if they were to reach out and grab.
Faster they tried to move as more people swarmed up and around them. They had made it nearly halfway out of the city before too many men swarmed up the side of the ledges and stood in front of them.
Blank came to a skidding stop, glaring furiously at the men in front of them. His eyes were piercing, but did little to intimidate when there were no numbers on his side. Beatrix threw down the bag of armor, taking out an ax with an extended handle – nearly the length of a spear – as her second weapon. They charged, not wanting to wait in anticipation, for the men still on the sides of the walls climbing towards them would not halt.
Just as soon as they leapt, they were suddenly swept away. There was no time for a breath. No time to call to each other.
Just water.
Freya back pedaled as fast as she could. But it was no use.
The soldier manning the alarm in the alleyway saw her.
His smile grew wickedly wide as he slammed his hand down on the dusty button.
Out of any alleyway, she had to lead her and Vivi down the one with the man controlling the world's loudest alarm.
She swore out loud.
"Freya is it –"
She whirled around, yanking Vivi by the arm. He gave out a little yelp, but she no longer cared to be quiet.
"We have to move quickly, Vivi!" she insisted, not bothering to explain what she saw and why the siren was now blaring loudly.
They hadn't even made it to the potions shop before she had gotten them spotted. Freya!Of all people! She cursed herself, hoping that this wouldn't mean death or capture for any of her teammates.
Soldiers began to flood the streets in front of them, but she whirled her spear out in front of her, slamming them to the side with the powerful and reinforced (many, many times) metal and wood weapon in her hand. Vivi conjured up small patches of fire spell behind them so nobody faster than him could sneak up on them. They always had the head start.
She was glad that she had been with Vivi – they wouldn't be able to run blatantly down the street if it wasn't for both of their talents.
Continuing to shoot forward, a shadow came over her head, and she tilted her head back to stare up at it as it came down with a boom in front of her.
"Amarant!" she nearly cried.
"Steiner told me to come along ahead with you guys! He told me to pass on the word – get to the Iifa tree, we'll regroup along that path! Eiko said nobody travels out that direction!"
"The Iifa Tree," Vivi repeated, as to commit it to memory. "Will we make it that far?!"
"We're going to have to, Little Buddy," Amarant said, giving a surprisingly soft nickname in all of their haste. Despite the situation, it made Vivi smile. He had hope they would make it there if they stuck together.
"Over there!" She yelled, pointing up ahead.
Zidane clashed his sword with a man as Dagger stood near the railing of the bridge.
"What is that light?!"
"Something very bad is going to happen very soon!" Eiko came roaring up behind them, shouting as she flounced between the legs of men and flung herself over the shorter stature of the dwarves. "We have to get away from Dagger!"
The light around her increased and they watched a great dragon creature appear from the markings around her on the ground. Everyone halted, standing in awe. The only one who apparently hadn't was Steiner whose one-track mind and hard-to-impress attitude kept him tumbling along even after the summon had started.
"Let's keep moving!" he shouted, nearly in their ears. That seemed to grab their attention, but luckily did nothing to stop the soldiers around them from gaping.
"What will happen to the city?!" Eiko cried, "She's going to summon a tidal wave!"
"Let us hope the dwarves are thankful all of the soldiers will be washed out of it!" Freya shouted without looking back.
"We didn't tell the others –"
It happened a lot faster than they expected. They were still shuffling, painstakingly slow, around people as Leviathan came, cast his enormous wave and left again, just like that.
The water felt like ice. It would have been greatly welcomed in the sweltering heat if it hadn't been for the shock it caused. The chill crawled under Freya's skin, gripping at her bones. She felt the cold's deathly fingers wringing at her limbs as they flailed around in the water helplessly, unable to find something to stop them as the water swallowed them up.
She hoped the rest of their friends would be okay.
The battle cries of the soldiers and the shrieks of despair from the town all but vanished. In her ear was nothing but the sound of crashing water and the will to survive the sudden onslaught of water. She had every bit of hope, however, that the dwarves would know their own city enough for the water not too be dangerous. The soldiers on the other hand, wouldn't even realize that around the next corner would be the edge of the city, falling off the great stilts it rested on into the long drop to the desert floor.
Well done, Dagger, she remembered thinking as she battled to come up for air. Perhaps it was the delusion of her mind slowing down, but she felt strangely proud of the girl – it was an easy escape for them… any other way, and her misdirection in the city might have cost one of her dear friends their life.
Hopefully, the wave wouldn't cost them nearly as much.
A/N: I am terrible. It was been FOREVER. Let me tell you, I always took advantage of how many chapters ahead I had written – dragging this out longer and longer for you guys must be the WORST.
I feel like stories always fall off the deep end at the most interesting part of the story, and I hate to do that to you guys! Just know that I am not giving up – the update will come eventually, I promise!
What a chapter. What a bitch to write.
But once I got on a roll there (it only took me forever and a half) it was a great roll! My only hope is that you guys will tell me what you think of it, and hopefully this momentum sticks around awhile for me to update again!
Didn't want to wait an extra day to proofread, so I apologize for any errors I might have made!
-zesty-
