(Publishing one chapter a week until the end of Part 5)

The Tale of Beowulf: Legendary

There is no time to grieve.

Beowulf Daravon does not even know if grief is warranted (how to feel, about the man who gave him hope, who trained him, who stood against him? How to feel, now that he's killed Alister?), but the question is academic. His arms and legs ached with weariness from his battle before he started bailing water belowdecks: now the ache is bone-deep, as he races from one crisis to the next, hauling heavy buckets up shuddering stairs and adding brute strength to every task the Syldra's crew points them towards.

"We'll make it!" Faris roars, in between bellowing orders and questions at the rest of them. "We'll win!" There raw belief in her voice helps keep them on their feet. It helps Beowulf feel sane.

So close. So close. Closer even than she'd been when the Worker had managed to lasso her on the forested island: she had been just in front of him, and Bremondt had been within reach of his swords. Maybe if he'd ignored his promise to Ramza and the Inquisitor, maybe if he'd struck then-!

But he is Beowulf Daravon, and in spite of everything he is still a man of his word. And because he is a man of his word, the Carindal has taken Reis. The woman he loves is in the power of the man who betrayed them both.

He has failed her again.

None of their frantic repairs will hold for long. The Syldra is barely afloat, its engines whining and screeching with the effort it takes to keep her moving. Parts of its deck still smolder from the Invincible's barrage, and the enemy ship has a solid lead on them.

But Ramza is here. Delita is here. Not everything counts upon him. He has to believe they will stop the Cardinal, and save Reis. He has to believe if he keeps moving, keeps fighting, keeps hauling bailing water with arms knotted with exhaustion, keeps stumbling across a ship deck shaking with the strain of the engines, if he just keeps this ship sailing, if he just holds on a little longer-

An explosion rumbles on the horizon, and Beowulf's head jerks up as buckets drop numbly from blistered fingers. There: a great pyramidal island in the distance, half-blocked by the Invincible's impressive bulk. And beyond that bulk, a bestial shape is rising up in a shower of broken stone, powerful magic crackling like a storm cloud across its great black form.

It's not Reis.

He has glimpsed his love in her full draconic glory only a handful of times, but each of those times is burned into his memory. Reis would shine a different hue in the late afternoon light: her violet would catch the rays of the light, rather than reject them. Besides, the shape is wrong, too. The neck is not quite so long, and the body itself is thicker and more powerful, the wings more immense in their span. This is a different dragon than Reis.

And as far as Beowulf knows, there are only two Dragoners in all the world.

The battle against the immense dragon has already begun. Beowulf sees the flash of steel, and the telltale fireworks of the Bursting Blade. Aching fingers close on his sword hilts. Weary arms, knotted with the day's battles, draw the blades from their sheathes. He strides towards the bow of the ship, eyes fixed on the dragon ahead.

"Full speed ahead, Captain Faris!" he roars. "We're needed!"

"Some of us can help from here!" Alicia shouts cepter in hand.

Beowulf nods. That is not his fight. His place is in the thick of it, dancing on the edge of the knife. The place Alister taught him to dance. The place he has lived for, these last few years, with no hope of Reis.

But there is hope again. There is dread again. There is a storm inside him, a storm of wild emotions, of hopes and fears and anxieties and terrors. And that storm does not scare him. That storm fuels him. Everything he has done, every battle he has fought, has led him here.

The Syldra does not fire its cannons—simply keeping the ship afloat is taking every onze of energy the crew has, and anyways, Beowulf does not envy the task of trying to peg a dragon with a cannonball. Alicia fires two or three experimental spells (including one of a kind Beowulf has never seen before, an arrow of pure white light that peters out well before it reaches the dragon), then scowls and holds herself still behind him. Lavian comes to stand beside her, and then Malak comes beside them. All of them lean on the prow, as the island draws closer, and closer, and closer.

And as the details of the battle before them become sharper, and sharper, and sharper.

Flashes and bursts resolve themselves into clear details: when the black dragon opens its great maw to breathe fire down upon his enemies, a flickering dome of light rises to meet it, so the fire parts around it. Fire and dome die together, and the dragon sweeps one massive forelimb, tipped with razor claws as long and sharp as swords: Rafa leaps in front of it, slams her fists into the dragon's palm, and blocks its blow. A flash of silver flame along the black dragon's flank: Agrias, slashing Save The Queen and all her considerable might. The dragon, still half-buried in rubble, actually flinches back from the attack. The beast is nearly as big as the Invincible: watching it flinch back is quite a sight.

All this, so quickly. But then the dragon flaps its great wings, and the flap is more than a flap, it is power, and wind explodes off its form, and with another flap the wind intensifies, and with another flap it becomes a cyclone, spinning fierce and terrible on the top of the island.

Rafa and Agrias are both knocked back by the wind. But another dome flickers into being, just at the black dragon's feet. And inside that dome, Ramza and Radia stand together, their hands locked around the same red-bladed sword hilt. Drinking in that energy.

But the wind still keeps them at bay, and between the twister and the flapping of its mighty wings the black dragon is beginning to shake free of the rubble, beginning to rise into the air.

"If that thing starts flying, it's over," Malak says. "We can't beat a flying opponent."

Beowulf nods grimly.

"We can stop him from flying." It's Mustadio, his voice flat and exhausted. Beowulf looks back to find the Machinist greasy, soot-stained and blackened. He notices that the deck of the ship is rumbling beneath his feet, the engines groaning with effort.

"How-" Lavian begins, and gasps. She swivels back to look at the Invincible. "The cannon."

Mustadio nods. "If it can bring down one dragon, it can bring down another." He pauses, his eyes flickering between their ship and the dragon. "But, ah...Alicia...Lavian...I'll need your help. No telling what kind of magic the cannon requires."

Alicia scowls, and shoulders her scepter. "Alright, Mus."

"We've got your back," Lavian agrees.

"And we'll handle the fighting," Malak said. He has been tense all day, but now there is a slight smile on his face, full of sinister menace. "We won't be alone."

Ahead of them. Ramza has raised one hand to the sky. A moment later, and spears of ice dropped through the cyclone around the dragon, raining down upon its wings. The great black beast roars its displeasure, but folds its wings inwards to avoid the attack, and lands unevenly upon the hilltop.

"Ice!" Alicia crows, with a note of pleasure. "And did you see the size of it!" She laughs. "He's getting better!"

"With a teacher like you, how could it be otherwise?" Lavian murmurs. Her staff is clutched in a white-knuckled grip, and her eyes have a dreamy, faraway look.

"Save the sweet stuff for later, Lav." Alicia looks as feral as Lavian looks calm. "We've got some dragonslaying to do.

A pang in Beowulf's heart. There's love in how they talk to each other, and he misses that. But more than love, there's confidence. These two women care about each other, and trust one another, and that love makes them fearless as they walk into danger. They know what each can do alone. They know what they can do together. How long since Beowulf felt that way? Since Bremondt's betrayal?

But sometimes he still felt that way. Like right now, watching the ice rain down. Knowing Ramza was fighting Beowulf's enemy, the same way Beowulf had fought Ramza's.

And he might feel that way again. No, he would feel that way again. He was going to kill Bremondt. And he was going to save Reis.

"No point docking a sinking ship!" Faris roared. "Brace for impact!"

Beowulf braced, as the ship plowed towards the shoreline. He heard the rumbling groan of the keel making contact with the floor of the shallow sea beneath them, and the groan crescendoed into a shriek as the engines kept pushing the ship onwards. With a final, screaming crack the ship grounded into still silence: in the same moment, Beowulf leapt from the bow, into the sea, and into the battle he'd fought and killed his way across Ivalice to reach.

The air whistled by his ears, as the water rushed up to meet him. He curled his legs under him, in case it was shallower than he'd thought, and hit the sea with stinging force, the salt swamping his nostrils and burning in his throat. But the water still cushioned his fall, so that when his knees scraped against the sandy bottom, he could already fight his way back to his feet, wading out of the shallows, turning his wade into an uneven jog, and his jog into a full-on charge.

The dragon had been pushed down the hill. Rafa had its enormous head locked between her powerful arms, struggling to hold it. But strong as she was, the dragon was stronger: it flailed its head, and sent her flying once more. Two swords flew past her, buried themselves in the dragon's wings: it roared its displeasure, turned its head and unleashed a great gout of flame at the Syldra, and at Malak. The flames roared their own rage over Beowulf's head, as he kept running.

The flying swords had ceased their cutting—Malak was presumably trying not to get burned alive—but Bremondt still had enemies aplenty on the hill. There was another great burst of silver fire (damn, but Agrias Oaks seemed a talent, and now that she had Save The Queen she was doubly dangerous: Beowulf badly wanted to finish the fight they'd started outside his father's manor) on the beast's flank: the dragon's head snapped around. Another burst of fire from its maw, but silver magic answered his blast, every bit the equal of his dragonfire.

So the black dragon twisted his great body. Its black tail, thick as a tree trunk, whipped through the silver fire and smashed into Agrias, sending her flying. Its mouth opened again, to breathe fire-

No. Not fire. Annihilation.

It was a beam of nightmarish force, black fury and ruddy red light, the same kind of obliterating force Wiegraf had commanded in his demonic guise, but larger and more powerful still. Beowulf threw himself low as the beam tore by overhead, shot a frantic look over his shoulder as the beam smashed into the front of the beached Syldra in a nightmarish explosion of fire and splintering wood. From here, Beowulf couldn't tell if anyone had been caught in the blast.

But there were others better suited to rescuing the injured. Beowulf was a sword. And there was a dragon in need of slaying.

Head fixed forward again, charging back up the slope. Hard to read a dragon's body language, but that beam looked like it had tired the beast out a bit: his movements were a little more sluggish, and his posture more defensive, curled it on himself. His enormous eyes, blacker than its black-scaled body, seemed duller, glassier...

Until they found Beowulf.

Black eyes blazed—actually blazed, like Wiegraf's had at Riovanes, fire burning in the sockets so they looked like enormous pyres in his reptilian face. Again, he opened his mouth, and shadow-streaked red light pulsed in his throat: a blast that could annihilate a ship.

But it could not annihilate a Silencer.

Beowulf braced himself, spreading his feet and pointing his piercing blade straight at the beast. As it breathed its nightmare breath, he lunged into it, finding the way the magic fed upon the world like fire did, consuming it at a level more elemental, more fundamental. But a Silencer's art was founded in the fundamental, and Beowulf had never been deadlier in his life than he was right now: his piercing blade stymied the incinerating light, dammed it, convulsed it against itself. He could not do so for long, of course...but he could do it for long enough to redirect it. And with a slash of his cutting blade, he did just that: channeled the beam in on itself, and hooked it to the left of him. Wind and heat crashed by his face, a mighty current of destructive force: it crashed into the sea, and with a mighty foom threw up a great geyser of steam.

The beam of destruction ended. The force that had destroyed a ship. But Beowulf was still standing. As the steam rolled in around them, warm wet mist that cast everything in shadow, Beowulf took a single, menacing step towards the dragon.

"Roar all you like!" he bellowed. "But I'm bringing her back!"

And the Dragon spoke: its voice so enormous it shook the air like thunder, and rumbled in the ground beneath their feet.

"SHE IS MINE!"

The dragon punctuated his proclamation with a gout of fire. Beowulf spun through it almost without seeing it, without feeling it, without cutting through the knots of magic that had ignited into flame, without feeling the heat. The heat of his anger was too immense now: even dragonfire seemed to pale by comparison.

"Yours?!" he cried, charging through the flame. "She's not yours! She's not anyone's!" The dragon flapped its wings, and unleashed another great gust of wind: Beowulf slashed through it as the mist churned around him, and kept sprinting. "She's a Dragoner! She's a legend! And!" He reached the slope above the black dragon, "I'm!" He took a running leap downslope, both swords out. "Hers!"

A dragon's scales are as complex and powerful as the dragon they belong to. The creature is not just an animal: it is an amalgamation of physical and magical power, stronger than a behemoth's skin and as potent as a mage's barrier. Cannonfire might not pierce those scales.

But a Mage Masher? One as talented and Beowulf, and filled with righteous rage? He could pierce those scales. He could pierce the dragon's heart.

He cleaved through the black scales as though he'd plunged his sword into mud. Bremondt roared in pain, twisted to fling him away, and could not manage it. Beowulf kept cutting, kept stabbing, kept fighting. His arms ached with the strain: his legs throbbed as they fought to keep up with a beast so much larger, and so much more stronger, than he was. But strength didn't matter: power mattered. His father had taught him that, long before he ever set out into the world.

When Beowulf had begun his reckless, fighting ways, his father had not done much to stop him. But when he was a little older (just a few months before he met Reis), his father had brought him to a boulder-strewn hilltop along the Mandalia Plains, and pointed to the largest of the boulders halfway down the slope, with the large, flat-topped walking staff he'd brought with him. "Move that."

Beowulf did not need an explanation to rise to the challenge. He had tried, and gamely. But when he was sweaty, dusty, and exhausted, the boulder had not moved.

His father had walked around the boulder for a moment, carefully wedged the flat of his walking staff against it upslope, and then put all his weight upon the staff's bottom. And after a creaking, grinding moment, the boulder had rolled down the hill, and crashed to rest among rocks at the hill's base.

"There is a philosopher I read once," his father had told him, as Beowulf had gazed at him with awe. "He wrote: 'give me a lever big enough, and the right place to stand, and I can move the world'." He pointed down towards the fallen boulder. "There will be many enemies who are stronger than you. Many enemies who are smarter. Many enemies who have advantages you lack." He placed his walking staff in the grass. "But none of that means they are more powerful than you. None of that means they are guaranteed to win." He pointed the staff at Beowulf. "Power is defined, not by how much strength you have, but by how you use that strength."

It was a lesson that had stuck with Beowulf, even if he hadn't always consciously remembered it. He had honed himself, long before he had ever met Reis, or Ramza, or Beowulf, because he wanted to have the power to change the world. He had honed himself with Alister, because a Silencer could always be a lever to move the world.

Now, he was man against dragon. He was not winning. But he wasn't losing, either.

The dragon flapped his mighty wings as he roared his pain, but Beowulf twisted, cut through the wind with his cutting blade before driving forwards with his piercing blade again. The dragon unleashed two crushing, swiping blows with his enormous front feet, and Beowulf ducked beneath them (feeling the ground shake with the force of the dragon's movements, hearing the rush of wind above him like a cannonball) and nearly severed one of the dragon's toes in passing. The dragon lowered his mouth to breathe fire, and Beowulf spun aside as the flame rained down around him, thrusting up with his piercing blade to dull the fire even as he slashed across the dragon's chest.

But swift as he was, powerful as he was, he could not hold the dragon for long. He was tying him up, drawing his ire, drawing his rage. But his blades could not reach the dragon's heart. He could score him, scar him, hold him back...but he could not kill him. At least, not yet. Not until something weakened him.

Something like the cannon he'd used to bring down Reis.

Beowulf's magic might be practically non-existent, but his senses were some of the sharpest in all of Ivalice: he felt the power of the cannon, as it was finally fired. It was a lot like the magic of Reis and Bremondt, both in human and dragon form, only...twisted somehow, the same way warm water that feels so pleasant on undamaged skin stings when you're sunburnt. It crashed over his head, a shimmering cascade of not-quite-colors, and rolled into Bremondt: into Bremondt, flowing through his black scales like water of a different color.

The dragon staggered, almost as though it were drunk. The fire faded from its black eyes. For a moment, its reptilian face was almost human. "You..." the voice did not come from his mouth, but from his skin. "You dare..."

Beowulf drove towards him, blades at the ready. He could cut to his heart now. He could-

"YOU DARE!"

The voice came through his body, through his will. The voice was half-magic, the same way his body was. The voice was power: power enough to move the world, wherever its speaker stood.

Beowulf, charging to the attack, wasn't ready for it. He wasn't ready for the spell that unfurled from the dragon's body: a shout of black fire. How could fire be black? Through magic, of course: the same kind of magic Wiegraf had cast in his Lucavi form, the same kind of magic Bremondt had exhaled to destroy the Syldra. Beowulf felt it burn him before he understood what he was facing.

He managed, just barely, to cut aside the worst of it, but the effort left him gasping. He blunted its burning edge, but could not blunt its force: it hurled him backwards, left him rolling raw-skinned down the slopes, jarring against rocks as he fell.

And his warrior's eyes, ever wary of danger, saw all that black malice explode outwards, into a crashing wall to smother the cannon that had fired upon him.

Dimly, Beowulf saw Lavian raise a flickering wall of golden light against the black. He marveled at her strength: she had shielded so many now from so much danger, she had healed the wounded aboard the Syldra, she had helped to power the cannon, and she still had strength to cast!

But mighty and talented as she was, she was only human, and the draconic might she faced overwhelmed her: the golden wall blunted the force of the blast, but could not stop it entirely. It was smothered, swallowed: the black fire crashed against the ship. Beowulf could not see much, but he could see the cannon twist under this sable heat. It would not fire again.

And Bremondt was still standing. The black fire smoldered on his scales; no, smoldered in his scales. He had untethered some of the magic that made up his very being, so he could endure their assault.

He had endured it. No one was close enough to stop him. He had his choice of targets, and his eyes were fixed on Beowulf.

He opened his mouth, and there was annihilation burning there. At this range, Beowulf could not stop it. He was still going to try.

A dragon roared.

Beowulf and Bremondt both snapped their heads towards the sound of it, just in time to see the movement: a purple dragon, smaller and more wiry than Bremondt, crashing towards him. Her wings beat clumsily; too awkward to let her fly, but strong enough to speed her lurching steps. She roared again, and the roar was pure fire, engulfing Bremondt's head. As the black dragon reared back from the flame, the purple crashed into him, sinking her teeth into his throat.

"Reis!" Beowulf cried, rushing towards her.

"REIS!" Bremondt thundered, as he struggled to pin her without hurting her. "CALM YOURSELF! THIS WILL ALL BE OVER SOON!"

By way of answer, she raked her forelimb across his face. He flinched back, bellowing his rage. When she snapped for his throat again, he snapped for hers. Fire trickled from their jaws—both the normal kind, and the magic kind, multicolored with tinges of their scales. He saw echoes of the woman in her movements—the fluid motion of wings, limbs, and neck, as she struggled against a larger foe.

He didn't know whether she could have beaten him, under normal circumstances. But these weren't normal circumstances: she had been hit with that cannon who-knew-how-many times, and she'd been hunted for over a year. She was weaker than Bremondt.

Weaker, but not alone. And as Beowulf to her aid, he found he was not the only one.

From farther up the hill, Ramza came galloping down, with golden gauntlets on his hands. From a tunnel entrance down the slope, Delita came pounding upwards, Wiegraf's golden-bladed sword in his hand, his clay-red hair ashen with dust, his dark eyes blazing.

Delita. Ramza. Reis. The first time Beowulf had truly felt his legend in reach, they'd been standing beside him. Now, three years later, here they were again. They had trained themselves, honed their skills on innumerable battlefields with innumerable mentors. They had gained so much, and lost even more. They were generals, and mercenaries, and demon-slayers. They were dragons.

And they would be dragon-slayers.

Reis twisted in Bremondt's black grip, sinuous and subtle, drawing all his attention onto her as Beowulf, Delita, and Ramza closed in. The wounds across their scaly bodies bled, but it was not blood that flowed from them: it was magic, thick and viscous as the light of the Stones. It shrouded the two dragons in light like smoke, their snapping, fighting forms hazy silhouettes through a mingled mist of amethyst and onyx. The ground shook with the force of their fighting: the air shook with the force of their roars.

She was beautiful. He'd had so little chance to observe her dragon form since she'd changed: they were always plunging into or out of danger, never allowing more than flashes and glimpses. This was the most he'd seen of her, and her every movement hinted at the woman in the dragon. The sweep of the neck, the deft twisting of the clawed limbs and long tail...it all spoke to the woman he'd loved, who had beaten him time and time again, every time they'd ever sparred.

He loved her. The ferocity of that love never ceased to surprise him. It had been with him from their first time her strong hand crashed against his face. She hit harder than he did. She fought harder than he did. In his childhood spent dreaming of legends and stories, she was the first thing that ever felt truly legendary in his own life; first because she was a Dragoner; then, because she was Reis.

Look at her now. Bound into this body by terrible magic. Facing an enemy that was at least her equal on her best day. Weakened by years of struggle, and by Bremondt's magic. And yet here she was, fighting all the same. Not backing down. Never backing down.

With a great heave of his sable chest, the black dragon flung her backwards, so she tumbled down into the great broken hilltop. Her tumbling shook the ground beneath Beowulf's feet. The black dragon's black eyes found Beowulf again, and fire burned in his serpentine throat. He knew better than to think fire alone would bring Beowulf down: he was already charging towards Beowulf, claws ready to crush and kill as his wounds leaked black smoke.

Beowulf and dragon thundered towards each other. Beowulf almost imagined the shaking of the ground beneath his feet was caused by his own footsteps. He leveled his piercing blade, and raised his cutting edge. Closer, closer, closer-

Trying not to laugh, at least too hard. Because Beowulf was only drawing the dragon's eye, its rage, its hate. Not hard, when he had enough rage and hate to match it. But easier still, with Delita and Ramza closing in upon the black dragon's flanks. Closer, closer, closer...

Together.

Years since they'd done this. Years since they'd leapt into the fray together. Years since the Mandalia Plains, and Dorter, and the Sand Rat Cellar. Years since the Death Corps. Years since Fovoham. Years of regret. Years of pain.

Years of learning. Yearns of growing. Years of strength. And Reis had bought them the time they needed, to finish this fight.

They leapt as one. Beowulf, still drawing the eyes of the dragon. Ramza, his fists glowing. Delita, his sword ablaze.

And they were legends.

Bremondt breathed his fire, and Beowulf disrupted it, distorted it, weakened it: dragonfire thinned into a low smog of simmering magic, and Ramza drank that dissipated fire through his golden fists. And while Ramza drank from dragon magic, Delita slashed across Bremondt's black flank. His white-fire explosion was smaller than Agrias', but expertly slashed towards a wound left by Reis' claws: Bremondt bellowed through his skin, thundered his rage and snapped his head towards Delita-

And Ramza hammered one gauntleted fist into the dragon's jaw.

It was the same kind of attack he'd used again Wiegraf: the magic inside him convulsed in his fist and concussed outwards, smashing into the dragon with superhuman strength. The dragon's head careened backwards on its long neck: his whole body flinched, to keep his neck from breaking.

And then they were upon him.

Smash, slash, crash, swinging fists and slicing blades and bursting magic: stab, strike, blast, Delita and Beowulf whirling together in a whirlwind of steel as Ramza loosed lightning from his fingertips: they moved into and through each other's attacks with the ease of long familiarity, riding each other's magic to amplify their respective blows, feinting to cover one another's attacks, leaping through the feints to strike where Bremondt was weak. They surged together like the sea that surrounded them, and drove the wounded dragon back step by thundering step as they cut, sliced, and diced him to pieces.

Beowulf couldn't remember the last time he'd felt power like this. Power enough to move the world.

The dragon snapped, clawed, and fumbled backwards from their joint assault. His great body was shrouded in the viscous mist that bled from his countless wounds. Through the haze, they glimpsed human terror in his black eyes, wide and fearful with disbelief.

"No..." His voice rumbled from his body, as Delita knocked one feeble claw aside with an explosion of bright magic. "No..." His voice trembled, as Ramza hammered both gauntleted fists into the other claw, and smashed it back. His limbs askew, the dragon faltered, and nearly bowed to the earth. His frightened eyes found Beowulf, as Beowulf closed in for the kill.

"NO!"

The word is ignition: the ruddy, obliterating light that had burned in his throat now bursts from his body, a shout of wind and heat and destruction. Ramza and Delita are knocked back by the force of it: only Beowulf keeps his feet, cutting at the threads of magic that tie the explosion together. He feels his hair sizzling on his head, feels his skin shrinking with the heat of the power in front of him, pays it no mind. There is only the battle. There is only the dragon.

The dragon, flapping its mighty wings, rising on the thermals he has created with the force of his own magic. The dragon, airborne at last, with destruction burning in his throat. The dragon, out of reach of Beowulf's blades, and ready to unleash destruction upon them.

"Ramza!" Delita hurtles past on Beowulf's left, charging the dragon, Wiegraf's sword shining in his hand, but what he can do, what Bursting Blade can reach the dragon so high in the sky? But Ramza is charging from the right, not even looking at Delita, and their arcing charge intersects several feet below the dragon, and Delita's sword is shining, glowing with power and potential, and he slices with his blade—not down, but up.

And as he slices, Ramza is leaping, to meet the apex of the blade's ascent. When the magic explodes with white hot force, it throws Ramza high into the sky: Beowulf can see him drinking in the power of Delita's attack, drinking in its magic as he rockets up after the dragon, as though he is a creature of flight himself. A moment later, and Ramza stomps his feet, and there is a flash of magic in his heels, a convulsion of the kind that Ramza used to strike Wiegraf and Bremondt alike, and the force of that burst is enough to carry Ramza still higher, past and over the black dragon-

Before he smashes down upon the dragon's back, with all his force and fury.

The surprise on the black dragon's face is comical, as he is knocked from his course, and crashes back down to earth. Beowulf zigzags backwards with hotfooted steps, his eyes tracing every detail of the dragon's fall, and of Ramza clinging desperately to the beast's back, and of the terror and disbelief in Bremondt's great black eyes. The dragon hits the hill again, and the impact might have knocked Beowulf off his feet, if he wasn't already charging back into the fray, charging towards the dragon's head-

And burying his piercing blade right in the center of the dragon's left eye.

Like the rest of his body, the eye is only partly physical: driving his blade into it is as much an act of flummoxing magic as it is of piercing flesh. But the pain is real: the agony in Bremondt's scream radiates down through the blade, as the black dragon flails his great head backwards, desperate for escape.

Beowulf lets the dragon flail. He drives his cutting blade into the dragon's jaw, to keep himself attached as they rise into the sky. And when the dragon's head has reared back as far as he can go, Beowulf twists about, drawing his piercing blade from the gooey ruin of the dragon's eye, and slashing with his cutting blade once again. Finding the dragon's throat, just beneath its jaw, just at the top of his long, serpentine neck.

Gravity is with him now: he plunges down like a zipper, unraveling Bremondt's neck. Black magic pours from the ever-largening wound, and Beowulf surfs his lethal slash down to the ground, and spins away with his Silencer's blades slick with a dying dragon's black blood.

Bremondt has not moved. His head is cast up to the sky. The wound in his long neck is like some enormous gateway out of some story, pouring forth shadows. The blackness from it is so intense it actually seems to diminish the dragon it belongs to, so the dragon seems lost, like a shadow in the night.

"This...is not supposed to..." It is Bremondt's voice, weak and disbelieving. "This is not...God's will, I...I am supposed to..." The black mist keeps pouring: the dragon keeps fading. "This is not...how my story...is supposed to..."

A ruddy red light throbs in the thick of the black mist: slowly at first, like the first hints of dawn on the horizon in the wee hours of the morning, then brighter, fiercer, swelling and swelling as it drains the darkness, drowns the darkness, obliterates the darkness, and Beowulf shields his eyes from its radiance.

The light fades. Beowulf blinks, and finds the Cancer Stone, hovering where a dragon once stood, just as Wiegraf's Stone hovered in Riovanes. The last of the red light that washed away the dragon still gleams on its surface.

The light fades. The Stone starts to drop to earth. Beowulf has already crossed the distance between him and it, sheathing his swords as he runs: he grabs the Stone inches from the ground, and keeps running.

He hopes everyone is alive and well, but he does not turn his head to look. He is charging up the hill, sliding down broken stones and leaping between ruined walls. He has not come all this way just to kill a dragon. He has come to save one.

He finds her in the broken hilltop, laying in her own amethyst haze upon a silver disc so like the one that did this to her. Violet eyes blink dimly up at him as he skids to a stop in front of her, with the Cancer Stone in his hands. "This can turn you back, can't it?" He casts his eyes about the silver disc, but he sees no altar like the one that changed her: perhaps it is buried in the rubble of their battle. "How do we-"

But she is shaking her head: slowly, with great effort, and if it weren't so weak it would almost be funny to see a dragon make such a human gesture.

"I do not believe that would work."

Beowulf's head snaps up to the voice. Zalmour, his face as grey as his hair from the dust that has fallen on him, is picking his careful way towards them. "I am unfamiliar with this magic," Zalmour admits. "But the nature of the two transformations seems fundamentally distinct. Bremondt's transformation was voluntary, while Reis' was inflicted upon her." He stopped. "You would need another Stone."

"We don't have another Stone!" Beowulf cried, and now his heart is starting to crack, the weariness of this long day begins to sink in, he has killed Alister and he is bested Bremondt and he is finally at Reis' side, there has to be something he can do!

He wraps his arms around the dragon's wounded chest, feeling her bleeding magic tingling against his skin. "Reis, Reis, why are you here, what did you want, there has to be something..."

He hears more movement behind him. He feels her move, to look towards the source. Reluctantly, he lifts his own head. Others are slowly picking their way through the ruins: Beowulf sees Meliadoul, and Agrias, and Rafa. But closer than the others is Ramza, his arm slung over Delita's shoulder. Delita has sheathed his sword, but there is still something in his hand. It is an aquamarine crystal, with light shining from the Aquarius sign emblazoned on its front.

"Try this one," Delita says, and offers the Stone to Reis.

She jerks her head down towards the silver disc. Delita leans Ramza against a still-standing wall, then places the blue Stone upon the disc. Reis turns hazy eyes to Beowulf, and Beowulf slowly places the Cancer Stone besides the Aquarius. She jerks her head again, away from the disc, and the two of them step backwards, as Reis sets her great head before the two Stones. Gingerly, she reaches out with her forelegs, and places a single claw on each. Her eyes close, and her body curls in on itself, like a sleeping cat.

And there is light.

Light, swelling from the two Stones on either side of the dragon, rising just like the light that banished Bremondt. Light, ruddy red and horizon blue, mingling together, swirling in great rippling eddies around the violet dragon, into the violet dragon, through the violet dragon. Light, rising up into a great geyser, than crashing back down to earth, draining away to some unseen place-

And leaving a woman in its wake.

She is hunched over, her two hands braced against the Stone that now glow only faintly beneath her touch. She is naked, and the sweep of her tan limbs hold something of the violet dragon's elegance to them. Her hair is longer, and streaked with grey. There are lines on her face that weren't there before. And when she opens her violet eyes, there are already tears gleaming there.

"Beowulf-"

His lips are already on hers, swallowing her words, drinking her breath. They kiss, and they cry, and their faces are slick with each other's tears.

He is hers. He is home.