Chapter 10: Trust
Apollo sped through the digital obstacles. He slid under a narrow opening, vaulted off a low railing, and swung from a floating pixel. He had ordered the others to stay with Shiron at root access; it was too important to lose. Of course, so was Kirin. He quickened his pace even more as soon as his feet hit the floor.
"Apollo," Shiron said over the radio, "the lock went down on your end, and just in time. They were trying to fire the Star Dragon! Should I thank you or Kirin?"
"It must have been Kirin," Apollo answered. "We haven't lost her yet."
"I've got comms back up," Shiron said, "but I can't reach her. There's some kind of interference keeping me from pulling her back."
Another swirl of fractured polygons obstructed Apollo's path. Swinging towards them, he threw a fan of needles into several shapes and snatched them out of his path. Beyond the opening, Apollo observed a tube shape, hollow through the center. He attached his ropes to it, spiraled through, and landed back on solid floor. Looking up, he found himself in the ominous shadow of a looming pyramid.
"I think I've found the source," Apollo said. "I'm going in. Pull us back the instant you see both our signals."
"You bet," Shiron said through the encroaching static. "Bring her back, Apollo."
Apollo approached the pyramid and hit the door switch. When the double doors hissed open, a dark smoke seeped from within. Apollo's sensors went haywire. The interference: it was dragon radiation. Apollo covered his masked face and braved the darkness.
"Kirin!" he called into the haze. "Kirin, are you in here?"
By what Apollo could make out through the fog, he was moving down a wide walkway overshadowed by colonnades of looming pillars on either side. Above, the faint luminescence of something like iridescent chains crossed as a cobweb between the pillars. As Apollo looked up at them, the upturned toe of his boot bumped against something. His eyes discerned a streak of blue amidst other scattered debris on the floor. He stooped down and picked it up. There was no mistaking the scabbard; it was the length of Kirin's staff.
Apollo called Kirin's name again. Only his echo, returning from the plutonian halls, answered him. He heard a different movement behind him. Raising his needles between his fingers, Apollo snapped around and met the flickering gaze of a three-eyed robot; it was limping towards him with its own knives raised. Before Apollo could make a move, however, something else crashed onto the robot and nailed it to the floor.
Apollo strained to see through the shifting smoke. For a moment, he didn't have the first clue what he was looking at. All he could discern was an entangled mess of yellow and pink lights, like the bioluminescence of something from the ocean's abyss. The outline of what he could only assume was a head turned toward him and fixed a glare from two beady points of burning pink on him.
"A-pollo?" a strained voice squeaked.
Apollo thought he recognized the voice. The haze thinned. It was then he saw the glint of the stained sword.
"Kirin?" he said.
. . . . . . . . . .
Copen and Zeno pushed down the hallway. Their guns on full auto, they were mowing down the hordes of zombies pouring from Merak's portals, staining the black-block walls like a winepress.
"Oh, come on!" Merak said. "When are you gonna figure out that you're already dead?"
"You clearly haven't heard my latest album," Lola answered. "Boss never gives up. I made, like, twelve songs about it!"
Zeno's rifle clicked with his latest trigger pull.
"I'm getting real low here," he said as he flicked out the mag.
The swarm of skittering and staggering zombies, bearing row after row of jagged teeth, closed in rapidly. Copen stepped in front of Zeno and unveiled the muzzle of the EX Gear. He countered the assault with a swarm of his own.
"Flesh Eater!"
The deafening drone of a hundred buzzing wings filled the air as a dense cloud of carnivorous insects poured from the muzzle. The bugs immediately latched onto the zombies and gnawed their rotten flesh, stripping them down to skeletons in a matter of seconds. While the swarm cleared the path, Teseo's voice screeched over the flies.
"Merak!" he said. "Switch out! Go deal with that little worm before he pulls the whole system out from under us!"
"This is starting to feel like work," Merak grumbled.
Teseo cleared his throat while Copen and Zeno advanced past the dissolving remains of the devoured zombies.
"Well, son of a glitch. You teamed up, didn't you?" Teseo said. "Guess I should've seen that one coming. You are both in the dead dad club after all. Twice for Zeno."
"He was not my dad!" Zeno said.
"GV said the same thing, lol," Teseo said. "It was cap then, too."
"What is he say–" Copen started to ask.
"Nope," Zeno cut him off. "Not talking about this right now."
They both dove into the warp gate at the end of the hall. When they emerged from the other side, they immediately fell a short distance. Copen landed on his knees and forearms. He stood up shakily as Zeno crashed behind him. Copen had to blink several times to ensure what he was seeing was real. The blue and pink room he found himself in was not merely formed of pixel blocks; it was pixelated like a retro video game. Even Copen's own hands appeared as sprites to him.
"Crap," Copen said. "Another eye malfunction."
Zeno stood and started lifting his glasses up and down.
"Uh, that ain't just your eyes, bro," he said.
"Like what I've done with the place?" Teseo said. "This time, you play by my rules!"
"Bring it," Zeno said. "I've beaten plenty of retro games in my day."
"Oh, you don't beat this one," Teseo said, "but if you score good, I will keep your names on the leaderboard. It's the closest thing you'll get to a tombstone. Now, ready? Go!"
A legion of robots began to spawn around them. These robots, however, were neither Sumeragi nor Eden machines. In addition to their pixelation, the robots were of a more cartoonish appearance, many of them having wide eyes. The most humanoid machines, which composed the majority of the crowd, were even wearing neckties. Few of them appeared military; they more resembled service bots, flying drones, and other commonplace machines with faces slapped onto them. Nonetheless, they were clearly present with hostile intent.
Sensing the intensity of the coming battle, Lola overdrived into idol form to better fulfill her function as Copen's dedicated hype artist.
"You wanna play, huh?" she said. "I've got your play button right here!"
[Luminous Promise– Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX ost]
Copen and Zeno glanced at each other and nodded. The robots rushed in from all sides, so Copen and Zeno took back to back firing positions. They opened fire but encountered a new problem; when their shots impacted the robots, pixels seemed to fly off the machines and hover around them. After taking a few hits, one of the robots froze in place, but gradually, the pixels reattached and reformed the robot.
"I may need a bigger gun," Zeno said.
Following his own advice, Zeno thumped an explosive round from his grenade launcher. Copen also fired the Blaze Ballista. The explosive shots each directly impacted a robot on either side and succeeded at blowing them apart, but the other robots scattered by the blast began to reform as well. The machines inched closer and closer.
"Split!" Copen ordered.
Copen and Zeno each fired a few disabling shots before diving from their central position and weaving through the crowd of bots. Lola drew the Hailstorm Blades and swished them back and forth through the crowded robots to clear Copen's path. The frozen swords tore gashes through the pixels, knocking some bots aside and freezing others in place, but only a few dissipated entirely.
Copen bashed one of the robots with his shield, marking it and throwing it to the floor. As he stepped over it, he fired a long burst of homing shots. The photons dismantled the machine pixel by pixel, but Copen would need a more efficient means of attack to survive the onslaught. Having reached the wall, Copen swiveled around and presented the purple light streaming from his shield muzzle.
"Gorgon Gaze!"
The moment the light entered the range of the robots' scanners, they each froze in place. The Gorgon Gaze was the weapon Copen had created from Elise's glaive shard. Unlike his other septimal weapons, it was taken less from her actual septima than her glaive configuration, a fact which suited Copen well; if he had been able to weaponize the Resurrection septima, he would have buried it long ago.
Copen had Lola fire the Broad Circuit, Teseo's own ability, at the disabled robots. The circuit beams tore through the machines to much greater effect than the other weapons and burst their pixelated frames, proving his hypothesis correct; the robots' recovery systems were a direct result of Teseo's septima.
Only one of the line of humanoid robots Copen had frozen managed to break free before he could destroy it. As it sought to tackle him, Copen rolled past the robot and fired his boost jets to crush it against the wall. As soon as Copen released pressure from the pinned machine, it collapsed and dissolved.
Several sanitation machines, like tall robot vacuum cleaners, sped on a collision course toward Copen. With an incredulous glance at the strange manner of opponent, Copen loaded Greed Snatcher rounds into his gun; if the Broad Circuit could disrupt the regenerating pixels, so would they. Lola launched the Vantage Raid, sticking the cleaners in a mess they couldn't mop up while Copen raised his revolver and blasted each of the stuck machines to bits.
On the other side of the room, Zeno was making a less successful attempt to hold his ground. Teeth clenched, he unloaded his final assault rifle mag into a single robot, just managing to blow it apart. The moment his AR stopped firing, Zeno dropped it to his waist and drew his sidearm.
A double tap to the head of the nearest robot halted its advance, but another's hands were nearly on his throat. Zeno dove on his back and pumped another three rounds into the attacker, stopping but not destroying it. Before he could scramble to his feet, however, another humanoid robot was nearly on top of him. Zeno launched his grapple line toward the wall behind him and let the retracting line drag him across the floor, away from the hostile machine's clutches. As he slid, Zeno emptied the rest of the bullets in his handgun, landing every shot but to minimal effect. Bracing against the wall, he dropped the magazine as he stood and quickly reloaded.
"Zeno!" Copen called from across the room. "Use the Border! The rounds bypass barriers!"
Zeno immediately took Copen's advice and drew the revolver with the finesse of a western outlaw. The Beowulf bullet crashed through the nearest robot's faceplate, blowing it to low resolution bits from top to bottom.
"Now that's more like it!" Zeno said.
Zeno drew his sidearm once more and began dual wielding the handguns. Using his weaker pistol, he slowed and disabled the robots before blowing each of their heads off with the more powerful revolver. As two approached from his sides, he crouched down to avoid their grasp, crossed his arms and blasted them both.
Having emptied the Border's cylinder, Zeno was still surrounded. Quickly returning the revolver to its holster, Zeno primed one of the two EMP grenades he was carrying and threw it down at his feet. The electromagnetic blast not only disabled the robots, as he had expected, but blew apart their pixelated frames entirely. For a brief moment, Zeno himself even returned to his normal appearance. At the same moment, Copen was finishing off the last of his attackers. The two reassembled.
"Come on, guys," Teseo taunted. "You're never going to make the high score that way! Mfw you haven't even figured out the rules #noobs."
"Something else I haven't figured out:" Copen said, "why even help Elise? I fail to see how hastening the zombie apocalypse benefits you."
"That's because you're cringe, Copen," Teseo answered. "Heard of the Star Dragon? With a few modifications (shoutout to Merak), I'll be able to channel my own septima through it and lit*er*ally #hacktheplanet. Then, her life-and-death meddling won't even matter, because I'll be even more of an immortal god than I already am!"
"And what makes you think you can take immortality for yourself?" Zeno said.
"You underestimate my power," Teso said. "Don't you worry. I've already got something cooking for that (#Asroc)."
"Blasphemy," Copen said. "There's no doubt I'm on God's side today."
"Look out, everyone!" Teseo said. "He's got the power of God and anime on his side! But you'll need more than friendship and that gun Zeno found to survive this!"
Copen and Zeno looked up in response to the whir of several propellers. A multitude of cargo drones with crates in tow were swarming above them. At the same time, Teseo's septima flashed its virtual light into the arena and began constructing a pair of larger, graver threats. Copen and Zeno braced themselves.
. . . . . . . . . .
The sickly illumination of the chain web above dripped through the deathly haze, faintly revealing a battered visage. Apollo let the top of his mask up, exposing his wide eyes. Kirin's face was on the verge of becoming unrecognizable. Like Apollo's own, Kirin's eyes had turned black outside the iris and burning pink in the center. Chains, snaking from under her collar, crawled up her cheek like streaks of dried blood from her hairline. Horns, glowing with the same heat as her eyes, had sprouted from her hairband and loomed over her scalp. Her pale lips hung open in an expression of deep exhaustion.
"What did they do to you?" Apollo gasped.
"Stay back!"
Kirin presented the point of her sword toward Apollo's chest and covered half her face with her hand, running her clawed fingers into her hair.
"Don't– Don't look at me," she said.
Black scales covered most of her arms and legs, and a network of yellow chains criss-crossed both her limbs and her darkened cloak. The toes of her boots had changed into something like hooves upon which she stood unsteadily. Whatever her mouth had said, her eyes were begging for help.
"Kirin," Apollo said, "what happened?"
"Barely… holding on," she strained to say. "I can't… control–"
The chains twisted further up Kirin's neck. She clutched at them but couldn't loosen their grip. As Apollo stepped forward, Kirin staggered back; the chains at her feet were trying to stick to the floor.
"We have to get you out of here," Apollo said.
"No!" Kirin said. "I'm already gone, Apollo. They got the Star Dragon, destroyed the Bureau, killed everyone. My seal…. They broke me."
"That can't be," Apollo said.
"It's over," Kirin said. "My seal was our only chance. I'm sorry. I failed everyone. I couldn't save them…"
An instability, flickering between a sob and a scream, was creeping into Kirin's voice. Apollo had heard it a hundred times; it always came through the voice of a primal dragon. The madness of an irradiated mind didn't cause a complete breakdown in logic; Apollo's own dragon episode had proved as much. Rather, the radiation triggered a massive overstimulation of chaotic emotion which subsequently hijacked the victim's other thought processes and septima. They had thought Kirin immune.
"... just like I couldn't save GV," Kirin added.
"You don't believe that," Apollo said.
"You were right to not believe in me," she said.
Apollo snatched off the lower part of his mask.
"Listen to yourself!" he said. "You're talking out of your mind. The Kirin I know would never say those things!"
"The Kirin you know is a lie!" she shot back. "Battle Priestess. Dragon Savior. I'm no savior; I'm the problem."
"You were mine," Apollo said softly.
"I'm sorry I let you down," Kirin continued. "It's all I can do: hurt people. So, I'll make them suffer: Teseo and Merak. And I'll find Elise, alone, like I should be."
"I can't let you do that, Kirin," Apollo said.
Kirin shifted her footing. The chains hanging from her cloak rattled, and the ones on her cheek weaved together into part of a mask, its center resembling the bridge of a horse's nose.
"Get out of my way, Apollo," she growled. "Don't let me disappoint you again."
Apollo held contact with the pink eye that was still exposed. He deglaived entirely, leaving only his suit jacket and vested button-up shirt to defend him. His eyes maintained their resolute gaze through his glasses.
"I'm not leaving you," he said.
Kirin's chest heaved up and down, faster and faster, as if her heart were about to explode. Apollo stood his ground. Kirin cried out in frustration and charged, flashing blade raised, at Apollo.
. . . . . . . . . .
Copen and Zeno watched down their gunsights as the flashing forms of the two large robots came into focus. As the machines spawned into the arena, the buzzing cargo drones overhead dropped in more humanoid robots from crates they were carrying. One of the larger robots appeared to be a yellow-striped construction machine with clawed buckets for hands and treads on its feet. The other was little more than a blue helicopter with arms and legs.
[Countdown: 3, 2, 1, 0– Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX ost]
"Wait a sec," Zeno said. "I think I know what game this is."
"This is a real game?" Copen said.
"Dude, it's Mighty Beck: Burst!" Zeno said.
"The crowd funded retro revival that fell on its face?" Copen said incredulously.
"Yeah, with the nine robots," Zeno said. "We have to dash into them; that's how you finish enemies in the game."
"And why would that logic apply here?" Copen said.
"Have you not seen who we're dealing with?" Zeno said.
"Fair point," Copen acquiesced.
The construction robot rushed in on its treads, and the helicopter made a bombing run, prompting Copen and Zeno to split once more. As Copen popped up from his dodge roll, he put a few shots into the nearest robot and tested Zeno's theory by charging it as soon as it destabilized. Somewhat to his surprise, Copen plowed straight through the robot, bursting it into a shower of pixels like shattered glass.
At the same time, Zeno double tapped a robot and attempted to barge through it with his shoulder. Though the force of his charge knocked the machine down, it remained intact. He kicked its head in frustration. The thought then occurred to him that his other EMP was not the only magnet on his person. He lifted his foot and activated his magnetic boot, crashing it down onto the robot's necktie. The stomp achieved the results he had been looking for.
With a smirk, Zeno snatched a throwing knife from the brace of blades on his thigh and flicked it into the knee joint of the next robot charging him. The machine fell to its knee and lifted its gaze back up just in time to see Zeno's magnetized heel come crashing into its face with a shattering roundhouse.
As the shards of Zeno's latest kill scattered across the floor, the construction robot set its sights back on Copen. Its bucket hands retracted and morphed into drills, one of which it plunged into the floor. Detecting the seismic shift beneath Copen, Lola immediately pushed her own Twintail Bunker drills into the floor, launching Copen away from the ensuing blast. The robot kept track of Copen and thrust out its other drill arm, stretching out the length of its appendage in a piercing punch. Copen, however, bullit dashed straight over the shaft of the spiraling drill bit, kicked off from the machine's head and blinded it with a faceful of homing photons.
At the same moment, the helicopter robot stretched out its hands and opened fire on Zeno with the machine guns in its fingers. In response, Zeno stuck his knife in a robot's back and held it in front of him as a makeshift shield. The hailstorm of hot lead set the robot's body to spasming, but Zeno stayed crouched behind it, keeping himself covered just enough to avoid becoming swiss cheese.
Seeing Zeno's predicament, Copen shifted his focus away from the construction machine. He whipped out the Tangle Nexus and slapped it around the helicopter's tail, drawing himself in and crashing against the pseudo-aircraft with a twisting slam. The attack sent the robot into a tailspin, but it landed on its feet and spun back to face Copen before firing a quartet of homing missiles at him. Copen reversed his jets and stomped back to solid ground, causing the missiles to crash with a flash behind him before they could turn hard enough to avoid the floor.
While Copen raised his gun and blasted the helicopter with energy beams, Zeno kicked away another robot and noticed the construction robot revving its engine while glaring at Copen. Raising his rifle, Zeno dashed between them and scrambled for his last explosive round. As the heavy machine came barrelling towards him, Zeno snapped the grenade into his launcher and immediately fired it at the robot's tread. The blast popped the machine up onto only one tread, giving Zeno just enough space to dive under the other without being crushed as the robot veered away from Copen.
"I don't have the firepower for this thing!" Zeno said.
"Then deal with the chopper!" Copen answered.
As the two switched places and continued the battle, Teseo set to mocking them relentlessly.
"Copen-chan," he said, "you may be a self-righteous tightwad, but I do gotta give you credit for one thing; you actually brought your waifu to laifu! Way to rep that sigma grindset!"
"Yes!" Lola cheered. "Someone finally said it!"
"But she's just a Lumen knock off," Teseo added, "so…, trash taste, F-tier waifu."
"Rip his face off," Lola said.
"Hey, put some respect on Lumen's name," Zeno said. "You know she's the OG."
"Forget Lumen," Lola said. "That jerk is calling me mid!"
"Omg, chat," Teseo said, "Zeno's a simp! Shame him! Simp! Simp!"
"Man, screw this guy," Zeno said.
Once they had cleared the last of the humanoid robots, the construction robot fired one of its drill hands as a missile, but Copen shot it down with the Pride Lance and deployed the alt fire to launch his own drill projectile back at it. As the drill bits clashed, Copen spun the EX Gear around on his arm, pointing the muzzle on the opposite side at the robot. The Blaze Ballista rocketed into the machine's arm and blew off its hand with a scorching detonation. Its pixels began jittering.
While Copen took his shots, Zeno rolled away from a raining rocket and cocked back the Border's hammer. The flying machine swerved back around and flew in low, charging at Zeno with its top rotor. Recognizing the threat of the rotating blades, Zeno dropped into a slide and narrowly avoided the slice of the blades as the chopper whooshed just over him.
Immediately, Zeno launched his grapple onto the robot's leg and braced himself. The machine dragged him along the pixelated tiles before pulling him into the air as it maneuvered to shake him off. Zeno struggled to take aim, but the way the helicopter was slinging him made targeting nearly impossible. He held on as the line slowly drew him closer.
Copen's opponent released a hydraulic hiss like the snort of a raging bull and spun its treads in preparation for a furious charge. Unflinchingly, Copen holstered his handgun and braced his shield in front of him with both hands. The X shape at the EX Gear's center flared with the burning illumination of his former ultimate attack.
"Doppler Desire!"
One by one, a quartet of pink clones formed in a spiral around Copen. The construction robot barreled toward him at astounding velocity for such a heavy machine. Lola, however, stemmed its advance with a series of pressurized blasts from the Hydro Zapper. The clones spiraled around Copen faster and faster.
Zeno, having drawn much closer to his darting target, raised his revolver and committed to a shot. The hammer slammed forward and sent a bullet crashing into the tail rotor, throwing the chopper into a tailspin. Still attached to the careening craft, Zeno swung around and around until he hit the ground with it. The impact, though it rocked his ribs with a sharp pain, proved much less debilitating to him than to his destabilized opponent. He climbed to his feet and started reeling in his line.
The construction machine's eyes were burning as its treads screeched against the floor. At just the moment that the Hydro Zapper fizzled out, Copen's clones reached their maximum rotation speed and formed a deadly blur around him. The heedless robot kept charging. All of Copen's boost jets fired simultaneously and rocketed him into the heavy machine. For a moment, they held each other in deadlock.
"Get over here!" Zeno shouted as he reeled in his crawling catch.
At the same moment, Copen overpowered his opponent and Zeno leapt with both feet onto the helicopter robot's head. The construction machine's chest caved as Copen plowed through, and Zeno's mag boots crushed the chopper's head into the floor. A shower of broken pixels fell like confetti around the two victors while they both stood panting. After taking a moment to catch their breath, they looked at each other.
"Thanks for having my back," Zeno said.
"Likewise," Copen admitted reluctantly.
"Uh, aren't you guys forgetting something?" Teseo said. "I still have seven more of those to throw at you. This boss rush is just getting started!"
True to his word, Teseo began spawning in several more animated robots. Zeno gave Copen a nervous glance, but the pair steeled themselves and engaged the next onslaught.
. . . . . . . . . .
Reflections of yellow flashed from Apollo's lenses as Kirin's galloping strides left chained eruptions in every step. Behind his spectacles, Apollo's hard, unblinking eyes watched the quiver in Kirin's transformed eye. It was that same razor glare she had given him back at the Bureau. As the thunderous flashes drew closer and closer, Apollo eyed the blade itself. With half of Kirin's reflection burning from the steel, her words echoed in his mind.
"I just couldn't sleep," she had said at the beginning. "This is my fault. It's up to me. I'm the only one. Alone."
Kirin had been right about one thing; only her seal could stabilize a primal dragon. Only she could save herself. Apollo had to show her she still could, that she was worth saving. He clenched his fist around the scabbard in his hand. He adjusted his footing. Kirin was pulling back to strike.
Apollo knew that Kirin had no desire to hurt him. Most likely, she intended to simply move him with the threat of an attack. However, Apollo also knew that in Kirin's dragon state, it was doubtful she could exercise enough control to execute anything less than a lethal strike. She may have even gone so far as to reason that a fatal blow would spare him any further pain. He had but one chance.
Kirin thrusted the stained sword at Apollo. Already, the tip advanced at a slight angle, betraying her hesitation to injure her friend. Apollo reached out and lightly touched the back of Kirin's hand, triggering the vector control of his Pendulum septima and guiding Kirin's blade straight into its sheath in his other hand.
As Kirin, thrown off balance, swung around him, Apollo wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled them both to their knees. Kirin froze. They were both knelt to the floor, each with one hand on the staff between them. Apollo was holding her tight in his embrace.
"It's not over," Apollo whispered. "We're all still here."
"Our home," Kirin whimpered between rapid, sharp breaths, "they all trusted me."
"They were right to," Apollo said. "Shiron stopped the firing sequence."
"But, I saw them," Kirin said.
"You can fake a lot of things with AI," Apollo answered.
"No. No, don't do that!" Kirin said.
She pushed back from Apollo but stayed on her knees, face to broken face with him.
"Don't give me hope," she said. "I can't lose anymore. I can't."
"This isn't you, Kirin," Apollo said.
"Yes, it is!" Kirin said. "This is what I've always been, what I've always sealed away. You've never seen me until now!"
Apollo's hand was still on Kirin's shoulder. His sharp eyes softened.
"Then… I still believe in you," he said.
Kirin's twitching eyes went still. Her sharp breathing completely stopped for a moment. Her own hideous reflection spanned the front of Apollo's glasses, and behind those lenses, his eyes were still open, looking at a dear friend.
Kirin's next breath was another sharp one. A sensation of similar sharpness stung her blackened eyes. Her face warped. Her lungs spasmed. Tears, hot and heavy, burst from her eyes and streamed down her face. The half mask crumbled like wet paper and fell in pieces to the floor along with the black drops draining out of Kirin's burning eyes. White cracks chipped through the dark scales and horns clinging to her.
Kirin lurched onto Apollo's shoulder, letting her horns fall behind his back, and wept bitterly. The chains covering her broke and crashed, rattling to the floor. The scales shattered in a flash and crumbled around the pair. Wisps of radiation pushed out of Kirin's chest like a legion of evil spirits, scattering the smoke in their flight, as Kirin let out every prolonged sob and heavy tear she had to give. With both arms, she clung to Apollo as if he were her only anchor in the world. He held her nearly as tightly.
"It's ok," Apollo whispered in his own cracking voice. "We're here."
The top of the pyramid, which had been closed off, began to open once more. Between the ceiling and the door, the smoke began to drain out. Gradually, light returned to the chamber of death.