Denied the vengeance that had been her sole obsession during the last twenty years, Jena had given in to desperation. Even if it meant becoming something that could never be allowed to live in the better world she hoped to create through her actions, she was willing to seize every last drop of power in order to see her mission through. Yet now, with Consul Y spooked by the others and provoked into taking action, he’d made the executive decision to flee. The sudden departure of its target left Jena Apotheosis little more than an unchained beast, mindless and directionless. Sandalphon doubted that the chimeric monstrosity possessed the mental faculties to understand her proclamation. In a way the fallen angel was pitiable, robbed of whatever sliver of pride or dignity might have remained now that Jena had thrown away the one thing she hadn’t already sacrificed during her long campaign: her humanity. Now all that remained was a hollow Still, however pitiable this creature might be, it possessed such incredible strength that the Seekers had no choice but to put it down.
Once they steeled themselves for one final climactic battle, the Seekers sprang into action, and none more so than Sandalphon herself. After all, as Heavenly Wings she was on the clock. While Sandalphon took stock of the incredible situation at a glance, she heard Blazermate announce that she’d built up kritz for whoever wanted them, and without hesitation she decided to take the medabot up on that offer. “No time to waste,” she announced, reaching out and grabbing the metal medic around her narrow middle. She tucked Blazermate under her arm like a big blue football, then flapped her wings to jump up from the slab with the others to a smaller chunk of building floating overhead, where she crouched down with muscles tensed. “Let’s put our best foot forward.”
Sandalphon sprang forward as if fired from a cannon, jumping with such strength that the chunk she’d left behind flew backward, spinning wildly. Her huge body hurtled through the air, taking wing at high speeds to close in on Jena Apotheosis as fast as possible. The fallen angel had already begun to attack after all. With a wave of one disjointed hand it flung a handful of huge fireballs into the air to blaze through the night sky in an arc and fall like meteors on the Seekers’ starting position. With its other arm Apotheosis conjured a spray of gigantic icicle flechettes that threatened to skewer anyone unfortunate enough to be hit. Zenkichi, Goldlewis, Geralt, and Karin all scattered to start their approach. The monster’s elemental onslaughts flew a lot faster -and did a lot more damage- than Susie’s missiles; both she and Roland quickly found that there was no such thing as a safe distance in this fight as they got punished for standing still.
Of course, the melee fighters making their way toward Apotheosis didn’t get it any easier. They needed to make their way across a series of floating, irregularly-shaped platforms separated by death drops on all sides, all the while hounded by protolegions. Sandalphon’s plan was to make sure the fallen angel couldn’t blindside her teammates with miniature natural disasters while they closed the distance and chewed through the protolegions. “I will cover your advance,” she told them succinctly. Sure enough, Apotheosis had already noticed Heavenly Wings speeding its way, a bright star of divine gold piercing the chimeric aurora staining the night purple. It turned its full attention on her, unleashing a torrent of ice lances to impale the archangel midair. Flying headfirst, Sandalphon swerved left and right, inverted herself, and even performed a barrel roll to avoid the projectiles, and after just a couple seconds she’d nearly crossed the airborne battlefield. As the ice stream tapered off, Apotheosis brought up its left hand blazing with fire. Sandalphon let go of Blazermate, forcing her to take flight for herself, then conjured a digital screen in front of herself and began to type. A wall of divine golden energy appeared in front of her just in time to intercept a scatterblast of giant fireballs, and once they’d all detonated, the archangel immediately slammed her palm on her screen to launch the wall forward and strike her target head-on, staggering her for just a moment.
“Administer kritz now.” She pumped her wings and flew forward, empowered by Blazermate’s kritz. Swooping in, she delivered an almighty flash kick to the imprisoned torso’s head, bending the monster’s neck backward. Apotheosis howled, bringing both arms together for a gigantic clap, but Sandalphon managed to beat her wings and fly upward in the nick of time. “Optimal range confirmed.” Once floating overhead, she cast Celestial Castling, creating an array of screens around her that she tapped as fast as possible. With each impact, a divine star above her grew bigger and bigger, until with a final screen slam it burst in a shower of seven celestial rays. On contact with Apotheosis, their searing cold radiance both scoured its flesh and inflicted Frostbite and Flashburn to deal extra damage over time.
It reeled, and Sandalphon nodded her approval, hoping that her strategy would give the others the chance they needed to get close. For her part, however, her time was up. In a burst of light the archangel turned back into her human form, grabbing her halo the moment it appeared to avoid entering freefall. That left her in the precarious position of floating directly above Apotheosis with negligible defense and health, little more than a fly waiting to be swatted by the fallen angel’s hands. Or at least, it would have if not for a specific perk of being the Angel of Information. Sandalphon warped all the way back to Roland and Susie in a blink, where she brought out her staff and healed them without missing a beat with a fresh charge of Angelic Praise. “Your efficiency at this range is suboptimal,” she told them. “I recommend getting closer.” Then she used a combination of Vault to get up to a floating slab where she could comfortably survey the battlefield and provide aid. “Overwatch established,” she informed everyone. “Fire support online.”
That was music to Goldlewis’ ears. Like the others he’d run and jumped into the action without delay, knowing that the chimera’s elemental downpour could rain down on him at any moment if he lingered too long. With Sandalphon and Blazermate taking point though, he, Zenkichi, and Geralt could take on the protolegion squads standing in their way, while Karin grappled around. It didn’t matter if these artificial chimeras came at them with claws, blades, fists, or bows–by now, the three men had their number. Strengthened by the adrenaline that coursed through his veins, Goldlewis splintered the fist protolegion’s oversized mitts with mighty Behemoth Typhoons, then pulverized its noggin with a triple headbutt. When more joined the fray farther on, Geralt helped even the odds, and Goldlewis happily took advantage of a bow protolegion staggered by a bomber to shove it off the platform with a shoulder barge. Once the trio bulldozed the protolegions, it wasn’t much further until they reached the slab closest to Apotheosis itself, bathed in the holy light of Sandalphon’s Celestial Castling. After another moment everyone was finally where they needed to be, and the fight was well and truly on.
Apotheosis brought its huge hands down on the platform again and again, trying to squash the bugs that dared to bite at its massive silver body. Not agile enough to evade the blows, Goldlewis resorted to blocking them, and though they demanded enough Faultless Defense to chew through his tension, he managed to stand tall and stay close. Each battering barrage took enough out of Apotheosis that the offending arm ended up resting on the slab for up to six seconds at a time, giving everyone the chance to dig in as long as they stayed on their toes. While Goldlewis couldn’t juggle the arms, he could still combo them, and with Sandalphon taking potshots from afar at the imprisoned torso everyone got a decent chance to deal damage whenever the monster eased up for a moment. Apotheosis wasn’t about to take this lying down, though. It spread both arms to either side of the platform, then brought them together in another massive clap of fire and ice. Where blue and red met, purple lightning erupted, so while Goldlewis double jumped to dodge the initial blow, the detonation a brief moment later caught him and knocked him down.
As the veteran rolled to his feet, he saw the fallen angel preparing another assault. It grabbed hold of the slab with one hand on either side, holding it like a massive pan, then brought the imprisoned torso close. Part of him wanted to run up and start pummeling, but common sense prevailed. Why would the monster expose itself to attack, after all? One second later, he got his answer as the torso opened up to unleash a flood of purple projectiles. On contact they called down purple lightning, bathing the slab in a deluge of electricity. Goldlewis hung back where the shots would be most spread out and blocked, taking the chip damage while Apotheosis floated away again. Roaring, the chimera lifted up its right arm and brought it down in a withering punch, strong enough to smash through the ground let alone anyone standing there. This was a chance to hit it at least, and Goldlewis didn’t plan to let it pass him by. He brought out Skyfish and peppered the huge arm with bullets. “Get a load o’ this!” His fusillade just as Apotheosis withdrew its limb, leaving a hole in the slab that an unwary Seeker could fall through.
“Watch your footing,” Sandalphon advised everyone. “Look before you dodge to avoid falling through. And Angelic Praise is charged again, so call me if you need me.”
Goldlewis made a mental note of the hole, but his eyes were on the fallen angel as it made its next move. It lifted its left hand over the slab as its blazed with flame, then swept across to immolate the entire front half of the battlefield. He backdashed out of danger, then watched as the fire in the chimera’s palm reached a fever pitch. It brought its hand down on the right side of the slab, creating a web of fiery cracks on impact. The veteran’s eyebrows went up, and he scrambled to run away. “Go, go-!” Not fast enough, he took the ensuing explosion in the back, throwing him to the ground face-first to the concrete.
“Ugh!” Goldlewis groaned, hoping the others fared better. “Consarn it all…” He picked himself up, prepared to call in Sandalphon for a heal, but what he saw next made him hesitate. Apotheosis brought its hands together in front of its torso, its palms facing one another, and began to collect energy between them. A vivid pink nova welled up at a terrifying pace, and every nerve in his body screamed for him to get the hell out of there. But where could he go? Gritting his teeth, he brought out Skyfish again, trained it on the epicenter, and held down the trigger. But with his Security Level only partially refilled since last time, he didn’t have enough bullets to do the job. “Aw, hell-”
Apotheosis blasted out a gigantic purple energy beam, obliterating the slab everyone was standing on and sending them flying in different directions. Caught up in the reduced gravity, Goldlewis tumbled through the air until he started to fall faster again, at which point he and his coffin fell onto a small floating chunk. The veteran landed painfully on his back and bounced off into the open air. “DAMN IIIIIIIIT!” Right on cue, the lid of his coffin flew open and the long arm of his UMA reached out to snatch him by the wrist. It yanked him back to safety, and he landed with a roll, breathing heavily as he looked around.
Everyone who didn’t get off the main slab in time got hurled away like he did. While both of the fallen angel’s arms sported red cracks thanks to the team’s efforts, it still had plenty of fight left in it. Luckily there were plenty more platforms floating around, even more than before it seemed. Goldlewis realized that the Seekers weren’t the only ones caught up in this mess. Blue-coated, body-armored Neuron officers could be seen fighting Reunion members in their masks, hoods, and dark, dull overcoats, so embroiled in their own conflict that they barely seemed to have noticed that they’d been caught up in the chimera’s gravitational anomaly. There was even a third faction in the midst, its soldiers clad in militaristic dark gray and wielding
rifles or
polearms, probably a local Veles security force. The sight of it all prompted Goldlewis to let out a gasping, humorless laugh of astonishment. If that didn’t perfectly encapsulate the tragedy of the World of Light, nothing would.
Is Midgar really that hopeless?Sandalphon’s voice then reached him, as if in response. “Alert, bogey approaching from the Shinra Building.” The archangel paused briefly, consulting her databank via a holographic screen with incredible speed. “It’s Peace Preservation’s AH12:HC Helicopter, designation ‘Alpha’.”
Goldlewis looked toward the omnipresent Shinra Building, and his mouth went dry. “What…in…tarnation!?” Technically speaking, sure, it was a helicopter. But that word didn’t do this ironclad death machine justice. If its cockpit was the size of a normal chopper’s, then Alpha was as long as nine choppers laid end to end, and was five or six stories tall, at least. It featured two side-mounted ball turrets with four cannons apiece, and a gigantic pair of underslung quad missile launchers. As stupid huge as its twin rotors were, it just didn’t seem plausible that they were enough to keep this monstrosity airborne. Inside the cockpit, standing on either side of the pilot’s enormous control setup, were Consul Y and a
blonde man in a white trench coat.
“Did you fools think I was finished here?” The Consul’s voice resounded, projected by external loudspeakers.
Sandalphon narrowed her eyes. “It’s Shinra. Rufus Shinra, the president’s son. It seems that the leader of General Affairs has come to deal with Jena personally.” As she and the others watched, Alpha’s ball turrets opened fire, hammering Apotheosis in the back with a fusillade of huge explosive slugs. Screaming, the monster turned and held up its palm to fire a purple laser at its attacker. The helicopter stopped shooting and fired its lateral thrusters to boost sideways and evade the blast, which flew off into the night sky. “Our intercession is no longer necessary to ensure Jena’s demise. I recommend a full retreat.”
“I hear ya,” Goldlewis replied, finding his voice after a handful of missiles destroyed one of the chimera’s arms. “But where the hell do we go!?”
He was surprised to hear who spoke next. “Down here!” A bright green electric flash from Rei allowed him to spot Giovanna on a much lower floating slab, near what remained of the Neuron helipad. “There’s still a police chopper down here. Penance is getting it spooled up. Get down here in one piece and we can all get the hell out of dodge!”
Goldlewis took a deep breath, looking back toward the fight between Apotheosis and Alpha, far too close for comfort. A phrase came to mind, and though he couldn’t remember who said it before, it felt truer now than it had ever been. “They deserve one another,” he grumbled. Then he hoisted his coffin up and mustered all the energy he had left for one final gauntlet in order to make his escape.
Now that the infiltration team had reached Arahabaki, the hard part was over, at least for today. Knowing -or at least really hoping- that no more troubles lay between him and a good night’s rest, Luka allowed himself a couple long, deep breaths for the first time in a while. It had been nonstop stress since he and the other psionics met the Seekers at Beacon Mental Hospital, whether in the form of action or just severe tension. Compared to sneaking around that horrible ghost in the haunted cafeteria, and seeing Yuito’s soul sucked out of his body, the security guards around the Shinra Building were nothing. Still, Luka was glad to have it all behind him. All he and the others needed to do was wait quietly for Midna to set up the all-important portal so that they could get out, and so that tomorrow everyone could get in.
Of course, not everyone got the memo about the ‘quietly’ part.
In a fit of happy-go-lucky playfulness, Sakura tested to see if her voice would echo in this vast open space. Sure enough, it did, and it also got the attention of the automated security system. Luckily, the team didn’t need to stick around and see what happened next. As discreetly as they could, everyone made a beeline for Midna’s portal so that the Twilight Princess could help them through her dark dimension. In the moments before he left, Luka took one more good look at the otherworldly area, his expression almost wistful. If the collective hypothesis was correct, Karen was probably still somewhere deep within this place. Just what did he have planned for Arahabaki…for Midgar? Unfortunately, his days of knowing what his older brother was thinking were long behind him. “Karen…what’s going on?”
Tomorrow morning, maybe, he’d get his answer.
After a little interdimensional travel, Luka and the others left the overwarm, uncomfortably tingly atmosphere of Arahabaki behind, exchanged for the stoic, mundane silence of an unfamiliar business office. Like any workplace, the S.O.U. headquarters possessed a certain liminal quality when entered at night, long after its intended hours of operation had ended and the employees all went home, leaving the office quiet, somber, and still. For his part, Luka was incredibly relieved to be somewhere safe and peaceful at last. For a moment he was still a little tense, as if half-expecting this to be some sort of ruse that ended in an ambush, but when he went to the window and peered through the shutters to see the monolithic Shinra Building comfortably far away, he allowed himself to relax at last.
“Haaaaah…” he breathed, setting down his hammer. “Seeing as this is your base, I almost feel like an intruder. I am, after all, simply a random soldier. One face plucked out of the crowd and into the limelight. Just like in those tunnels, I’ve stumbled into something much bigger than myself once again. How small my world must have been, just the day before yesterday.” He looked over at the others, a grateful smile on his face. “While unfortunate circumstances brought us together, I count myself fortunate to have met and fought alongside you all. Thank you for having me.”
Midna reported no activity from her allies, so for the moment it looked like the four would be left to their home devices. Though never intended as a residence, the office still bore traces of the accommodations made for the Seekers on their first night in Midgar. While Midna tidied up, Luka lightened his own load. He removed his jacket, tie, and collared shirt, all of which turned out to be weighed clothing if anyone paid them any attention. Despite the fatigue he’d accumulated throughout the day, shedding that weight made Luka feel as light as a feather. Clad in a simple t-shirt and shorts, he sat until Midna reappeared to ask if everyone wanted a break. She mentioned going up to a mountain, presumably using another portal, and not just any mountain either. “Split Mountain?” Luka said aloud, his eyebrows raised. That was, of course, the distant impossibility he’d dreamed of visiting someday, should his duties in Midgar ever actually come to an end. And now of all times, his dream could become a reality, just like that? After all the impossible things that had happened today…sure, why not? After Sakura agreed, he did too, his excitement evident both on his face and in his gentle voice. “I’d love to!”
And so it was. One portal later, Luka stood atop a mountain of unimaginable size, his mouth ajar as he silently took in the most breathtaking view of his life. He could see for what must be hundreds of miles, from the range of lesser mountains bordering the Valley of Ruin to the west all across the trackless desert to the illimitable eastern sea. Scattered across the desert were the pinprick lights of countless tiny settlements, as well as a couple much larger cities, including the cream of the eastern sands Al Mamoon. New
hanging rails were under construction by FeeCo, each section practically a metal suspension bridge in order to hold up the behemoths that were the enterprising company’s
monstrous engines, but to Luka they might as well be ants marching across the ants in single file. He could see pyramids, oases, rocky foothills, canyons that must have been a gorgeously vivid red in the sunlight, and farther up the mountain, coniferous trees and snowy reaches. Strange that the temperature up here was so pleasant, when he could see what must be bitterly cold snowfields and crags beneath him. There was plenty of life up here to enjoy it too, between the reptiles, penguins, and animate balloons. Nothing astounded him more than the serpentine colossus Phalanx, of course–save for the revelation that at some point, the Seekers had made it their friend.
For a while Luka just absorbed it all, marveling at the breadth and wonders of the world beyond the Dystopiascape’s borders. When Midna prompted him to look, he realized he couldn’t even see Midgar across the western border range despite the myriad lights of the industrial metropolis, thanks to the thick cloud cover. He was glad that the skies over the desert were clear tonight. When Midna and Sakura turned their eyes towards space, he turned his toward the mountain’s peak, amazed that he and the others weren’t even that close to the summit despite their staggering altitude. He stared into the brilliant, almost heavenly light shining from that
great cleft as it loomed over the ring of mountaintops that once completely enclosed Jondo, the inverted bell whose final clang even he heard the week prior. He opened his mouth to ask the others what was up there, seeing as they’d been here before and all, but after a moment he closed his mouth again. Somehow, the answer seemed too important to be handed out willy-nilly like this, even if the others knew. If he wanted to know, Luka figured he’d need to make the journey himself.
For a while longer Luka remained quiet, drinking in the peaceful majesty of the night.
As her breathing finally evened out and her pulse slowed back down from her brief but terrifying run-in with the white tiger, Nadia made her way back toward the open area of Mercy Dreams, where she laid hands on and peered over the first wrought-iron railing she could find. She half-expected to look down and see the creepy prison complex overrun with a rabid throng of those awful little chop goblins, but to her surprise she found the new threat already under control. Of course, she knew she shouldn’t be surprised that Jesse handled a dangerous and anomalous object like the goblin-generating chest with professional speed and efficiency, not to mention brutality. Nadia watched the accursed trove slowly float up toward the first layer’s ceiling thanks to its attached balloons, spitting out two goblins a second to plummet, wailing, all the way down to Mercy Dreams’ fifth layer and a near-instant demise. Some hit the large central walkway, creating a mess that Nadia consciously averted her gaze from, while others plopped straight into the alarmingly bright green acid pools that hissed and sputtered to either side. A couple even hit the hulking, misshapen monstrosities that patrolled that bottommost layer, which did not go any better for them, to say the least.
“AaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaa...”
Sploosh.“EeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeee...”
Splat.“WhaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaa...”
Plop.Nadia took a deep breath to steady herself. The little freaks’ howls didn’t exactly make for pleasant ambiance, so the sooner she managed to tune it out, the better. Without the luxury of time, Jesse -pragmatic as ever- had made the smart choice, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Well, that was one problem solved, at least. Over on the other side of the second layer, Sectonia was mopping up the last few stragglers still running rampant around the room the chained chest came from. “Good thing I didn’t open that stupid thing,” the feral muttered. Once the big bug finished she made her way over to the other unusual-looking room on the second layer, followed by her retinue of antlions and disappeared inside. The flashy new white elements and pink crystals on Sectonia’s attire did not escape her notice.
Did she already fuse with something, too? Nadia smirked. “She is a gem.”
For another few moments she kept an eye out, her tails flicking idly as she searched Mercy Dreams for any sign of her other allies. It looked like the Bowser Bunch went into the same doorway that Ganondorf and Jesse exited from, curious about how they’d managed to rejoin the team maybe. Predictably, she could already hear a serious ruckus coming from inside. If they needed help they could use the linkpearls, but Nadia assumed they’d be fine. That kind of assurance was just one perk of rolling in a permanent four-person squad, complete with healers. Now that she thought about it, Nadia figured she could probably learn from their example and quit exploring this dangerous, unknown place all on her own. Not with Ganondorf though, since she could see the warlord going off by himself as if he knew where he were going, interspersed with intermittent pauses as if to zero in on something only he could hear. Nadia’s brows went up as she wondered whether or not the Dorf might have someone the same way she had Minette.
Nah, she decided after a moment.
I’ll be dead and buried before that guy makes a friend.That was all she could gather for now, as Nadia could find neither hide nor hair of anyone else. The bottom line was that nobody had delved all the way down to the depths of Mercy Dreams yet, which as the most tightly-guarded and hard-to-escape spot in the prison was also the most likely spot for its most dangerous captive to lay in wait. If that was the case, it might as well be Ms. Fortune who blazed the trail. Nadia pushed off the railing and retraced her steps, jogging quickly through the second layer. She adjusted quickly to the feeling of her hair’s weight behind her, as well as her new jacket. This getup was a little more restrictive than she was used to, but having secondary movement on her person as she traveled offered its own benefits. She recovered and holstered her bait launcher, then descended to the third layer, where she perked up her ears. No shuffling or gurgling meant that the others might have cleared out all the mind flayers, which suited her just fine.
As Nadia made her way through the third layer, trotting along at a brisk pace in search of the staircase down to the fourth, she stumbled on another irregular door set halfway down one of the hallways. It appeared to be wood rather than metal, and its hinges whined when she gently pushed it open. After hesitating for a moment, Nadia resolved to turn tails the minute she spotted anything spooky, and forged onward. The boarded floor of the dark hallway beyond creaked beneath her careful footsteps as she made her way toward a dim green light. She climbed up a small set of stairs and found herself in what looked like the interior of a log cabin, lit only by glowing inscriptions in a language she didn’t know, written vertically in spiky, curved characters that looked a little like antlers. In the center of the room lay an octagonal shape covered in symbols, with four pedestals atop it in the cardinal directions, all topped by dull green orbs. On the other side was an empty doorway into a small, dark room.
Her keen ears picked up the faint sound of flowing water coming from below, and she hesitated to step on the platform. Instead she went around it toward the podium northwest of the platform, which featured some sort of wheel. Eyes narrowed, she climbed up onto and crouched atop the podium, then put her hands on the wheel. When she turned it, some sort of mechanism disengaged and the central platform dropped suddenly, splashing down onto a murky black waterway before speeding out of sight, a raft on a subterranean river. Nadia blinked, confused. Was this some sort of emergency escape route? Either way, avoiding the trap made her pretty pleased with herself, and with a little extra pep in her step she made her way into the next room.
This one was mostly metal, cylindrical in shape. In it stood a central tower with two paddles jutting out at odd angles, each with a dark green button like the ones on the pedestals. Nadia saw a door on the other end of the room, but three irregular metal rings blocked it, one of them only partially. She tried pushing on one paddle, then the other, then in both directions, but none would budge. The door lacked a handle, and try as she might, the feral couldn’t see anything else in this little chamber to work with. “Ugh, must be missing something,” she groaned, reaching for her belt. “Gotta have some kind of light in here, right?” Her utility belt contained various weapons, the Ripened Heart, and even that magic jug of lemonade, which she gulped down for a little refreshment. “Kinda wish I kept that weird light right about now.” Only when she rummaged through her loot did she find something that glowed: the lumenite crystal she’d obtained from the Temple Guardian back in the hive.
She held it up, and instantly the green buttons on the totem’s paddles lit up in response. When the paddles turned, the lock rings in the room did too, sliding around Nadia with a smooth grinding sound. “Whuh? Oh, wait…it’s light!” Though alarmed for a moment, Nadia realized what was going on just a split second after the rings parted around the far door. It slid open and then closed again on its own, forcing Nadia to shine the crystal on one paddle or the other until they lined back up to open the door. She also noticed that the door she’d come in through had closed, probably the moment she’d first moved the rings out of alignment. “Hopefully there’s nothing in here I gotta run from…hehe…”
Feeling pretty smart but not that much more confident, Nadia stepped into the next room. It was a rounded wooden
gallery of some kind, with three framed archways exhibiting fine paintings. All three depicted a lush green marsh with peaceful waters arranged before a background of night sky and distant mountains, but each artwork also had an eerie subject: an inhuman figure in loose, rustic attire, with long limbs and rounded heads that were featureless but for long antlers and glowing eyes. “Creepy,” Nadia murmured, glad for the gallery’s plentiful light. In addition to the overhead fixture, each recess had a green lantern or two. “Finally!” Nadia smiled. “No more bumbling around in the dark. I bet everyone’s gonna be thrilled.” She grabbed the lanterns two at a time, affixing them to her belt. It was a bit cumbersome, but they would stick around for long. She turned to go, only to stop as another grinding sound made her perk up her ear. When she turned to look, she saw the rightmost painting moving, sliding backward until it revealed a secret passage. “...Okay!” she said brightly, a big smile on her face. “Well, I’m kind of on a roll. What could possibly go wrong?”
Nadia stepped through the archway and found herself at the top of a narrow staircase that curved to the left, which she creaked down one step at a time. She could hear the crackle of a fire down there and see the green light it cast. When she rounded the corner at the base of the stairs, however, she gasped, a chill running down her spine that made her skin crawl and the hairs on her neck stand on end. It was another round room, with a green fire in its center just as she expected, except around it stood at least a dozen raised tables with nightmarish skeletons bound to their surfaces. Their withered green bones had digitigrade legs with two toes apiece, well-preserved antlers, and ghastly, fleshless faces. All had their dead fingers curved around some sort of metal artifact facing the fire in the center, in which similar licks of green flame blazed. If the upstairs room had been a gallery of art, this one was a
gallery of corpses.
“The hell is this?” Nadia whispered, quiet enough that she didn’t disturb the dead. “A hidden jail?” Regardless, she didn’t plan to stick around and find out. There were neither riches nor mask fragments here, just a small piece of lumber on the ground by the fire. At first she thought it was firewood, but on second glance it looked like some kind of statue, so with her eyes on the cadavers she gingerly picked it up. Nothing sprang out at her, so she took a good look. It was a carving of a man with the head and hooves of a horse, holding something in his hands. A tablet, maybe? The statuette had an uncanny sense of purpose to her, and after thinking for a moment Nadia stuffed it into a belt pouch.
Then she beat it, hurrying back the way she came with her new lanterns. It took a little doing with all the extra light, but she made her way back through the lock room, past the hole in the ground, and back out into Mercy Dreams proper. There she took a deep breath, trying to put those nightmarish faces out of mind. “Uh, Ms. Fortune here,” she said, tapping her linkpearl. “I found five lanterns, so if you want a light, gimme a ring! Gotta do a good ‘tern daily, after all~”
Kamek delivered his own report a moment later, which confirmed that neither of the hidden rooms on the third layer contained anything useful. Well, anything obviously useful, at least.
Tentacles, centipedes, and poison, huh? I’ll pass. “I’ll take ten tickles if you have any of those. I could use a good laugh, nyeheh.” Idly Nadia wondered if her voice sounded any different after that fusion. She couldn’t really tell.
Therion’s voice issued from the linkpearl next, and Nadia was glad to hear it. She hadn’t seen her fellow thief since everyone arrived in Mercy Dreams, but then again, he was probably the better burglar between the two of them. He said that he and Primrose had reached the fourth level, where they found something awful.
Sounds like what I found, she thought grimly. ‘Nightmare’ really described this whole place, between its latent horror and its surreal atmosphere. Nadia thought about the tiger woman in her cell, entranced by visions of some other place. A dream, maybe? Well, it didn’t matter. If the others had reached the fourth floor, she knew she needed to get a move on.
She hustled the rest of the way across the third layer and down the stairs to the fourth. Near the bottom, she slowed up again, her ears picking up unfamiliar noises. Metal creaking, sharp footsteps, and a tittering laughter as if through a snotty woman’s nose. More than one source, it sounded like. Suddenly Nadia remembered that paper butterfly she’d unraveled before, the one describing the masked Irithyll Jailer. She hurriedly set down her lanterns, then brought out and reread the paper, internalizing the listed weaknesses.
Pierce, electric… She drew Athame from her belt.
Can do.Right on time, she heard one of the illuminators approaching. An idea in mind, she took a deep breath, crouched down, and put on a smile with her dagger in hand. “I’ll take a stab at it.” After a moment she sprang from her hiding place and faced the robed jailer, a red-hot branding iron in one hand and a lantern upheld in the other. At that exact moment, the lantern began to pulse blood red, and a horrible sensation shot through Nadia’s veins, as if that horrible light was burning away her very essence. It wasn’t painful, necessarily, but it was awful. By that time, though, the feral was already in motion. She sprinted forward, then used Charge, transforming into a tiger of yellow lightning that struck the illuminator like a bolt from the blue. The electricity coalesced behind it, and Nadia turned to use Battery by driving Athame into the monster’s back with vicious strength, once, twice, each piercing blow a critical hit thanks to the Charge used beforehand. Its body went limp, the lantern falling from its grasp to shatter on the floor, but Nadia couldn’t celebrate just yet.
Another lantern flared up about a hundred feet farther down the hallway, a cruel crucible that melted away the feral’s very being. She turned, her teeth gritted, and saw just how far the offending illuminator was away from her. With a snarl she kicked the first one off her blade and flipped the dagger in her hand. “Fine, you’re necks in line.” Nadia took off like a bullet, sprinting as fast as she could. The sound of her own heartbeat pulsed in her ears. As she ran, she unwittingly activated Fluffy Soft, transforming her legs into those of a white tiger’s from the thigh down. Even as the lantern’s baleful glare whittled down her max health, the burst of speed let her close the distance. “MrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrAOW!” At the last moment, Nadia went low with Cat Slide, low-profiling the illuminator’s smoldering iron and slicing into its leg with Athame as she slipped past. It stumbled forward, its defense reduced, and Nadia sprang to her feet to finish it off. To its credit, the illuminator recovered much faster than she expected. As it ran toward her, giggling, Nadia hurled her dagger at its lantern in the hopes that destroying it would light her foe on fire, but it clanged off and the illuminator struck her with its iron.
Instantly the fiery weapon reacted with her innate hydro to cause Vaporize, knocking her down in a burst of steam. That
hurt, way worse than it should have, and for a moment Nadia writhed on the ground. As the illuminator stepped forward, she pulled the Ripened Heart from her belt for a quick heal, only for the heart to have no effect whatsoever. “What the, no healing?” Nadia gave the illuminator a look of disbelief. “For me, that’s so not on-brand!”
Her enemy lunged, trying to stamp Nadia with its iron again. She rolled out of the way and jumped to her feet, cracking her head and rolling her shoulders. The lantern still shone, but she couldn’t feel anything any more. Maybe it couldn’t bring her any lower? Well, if any strike could kill her, that made sense. “So I just can’t get hit, is that all?” She grinned at the masked jailer. “No sweat.” The illuminator lunged, stabbing with its iron again and again. Nadia ducked and dodged out of the way, then pulled off her own hand and sprayed blood from the stump to splash her foe’s mask and render it blind. Then, as it flailed, she stepped back to create a Hydro Mimic in a surge of blood. From the visceral torrent appeared a Sakura Mimic that leaped forward with Shunpukyaku, striking the jailer with her twirling gale kick even as the branding iron blasted it into steam. The cost of copycats scaled down with Nadia’s health, after all, and she wouldn’t die if mimic took the hit. With the jailer off-balance, it was wide open for a lunging sword thrust from a Geralt Mimic, leaving it doubled over for an Ace Mimic to leap into the air and bring down the house with a meteoric shield plunge.
The ensuing bloody impact extinguished the lantern, and as the illuminator tried to rise, Nadia leaped forward. “Thought you had me?” Her right arm morphed into a white tiger’s, her claws like miniature swordblades gleaming with New Moon light. “Well, here’s my escape claws!” With the illuminator’s defense reduced by sixty percent, she sliced it into ribbons with a single mighty swing.
In the aftermath of the battle, Nadia gathered up her equipment and spent blood. Only when her max health began to return did she start feeling the pain, as her current health remained the same. Luckily, the brand faded as well, allowing the feral to restore herself completely with the Ripened Heart. “Ahhh…” she sighed, closer to tears than she would have liked. “Damn jailers…so Irith-ill-mannered.”
Hopefully there were no more where they came from.
