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year 5, quarter 3
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[attr=class,bulk] Celes had many thoughts as the man stared her down with his piercing blue eyes, practically glowing with magic. Most of them were a series of curses that would have made a sailor blush. Another was her own imagination, unhelpfully envisioning what it would feel like to be skewered by that sword. The last came with a wince as the man yelled back at her in that tortured, fiery voice that made her half expect that smoke would come billowing from his mouth.
”You think I don’t know that?!”
There was something here below the surface. Something that she didn’t and couldn’t understand. Celes had no idea if this was a good man lost in his own confusion and delusions or a murderer who merely thought he was doing good as he cut down every innocent in the path to his goals. That distinction mattered greatly while she was defenseless before him. She had faced many of the latter, and they were often irredeemable. It was a rare day that she faced the first.
But still, he stayed his hand and she remained thoroughly unskewered so that was a start at least.
And then the fires faded, and the demon of a man melted back into his usual form. A good sign. For her, at least.
It made his next speech easier to understand, now that she was speaking with the voice of a man rather than an esper. She had no idea what he meant, not really, but the tone of it all made her hope beyond hope that there was a chance to dissuade him without any further bloodshed. She didn’t think she could parry many more blows from his sword. From the ache in her wrist, she wondered if it was sprained.
After a long, tense moment, the man cursed and lowered his sword. Celes breathed a breath of relief.
This wasn’t over. It wasn’t even close. But if he could get through to him…
Oh gods, it was all up to her improvised speaking skills. Perhaps the crystal was doomed after all.
”You’re on Zephon,” she said, speaking quickly as he demanded. She was still out of breath from what must have been the worst strength training in her life, blocking his sword against hers. It didn’t help matters. ”It’s a different world from what you know. Wherever you were, however you get here, it doesn’t matter now. The rules are different here. Everything is different.”
She found herself reflecting the same kind of apparent nonsense that the swordsman had spewed at her in his attempted explanation of his mission. She didn’t expect him to believe it. But she had to try.
”I’m the same. I ended up here without any idea how it happened and everything I knew, everything I’d always known was different. I was a war orphan. Experimented on by the Geystahlian empire with magic extracted from espers. I eventually joined the Returners to put a stop to them until the emperor went to the Floating Continent, the goddess statues were set off-balance, and the entire world was destroyed and ruled by a mad god armed with his Ray of Judgement.” She said it all in one breath, the words practically tripping over each other. She paused to breathe again then raised her head and gave him a look of defiance.
”Do I expect you to understand any of that? No! But that’s what you sound like to me! I don’t know the words you are saying! And I’m not a slave! I don’t even work for the king! I run a small business down the road where we train mercenaries for the protection of the people! Those men in here? They weren't slaves either! They’re highly respected mages who make more money than I do though quite frankly I think I should earn more for being on call for bullshit like this!”
Her own simmering rage burned over the adrenaline that came from risking her life so stupidly. Her own frustration was a force all its own even in the face of quite possible imminent death.
”I should be at home reading a book, taking a bath, finally relaxing after a long day dealing with attitude from men with swords smaller than their egos! And then I get a sudden call that some maniac is storming the castle! You and I are stronger than almost anyone who lives here! That’s why no one is coming! Because people like us are stronger than they are, and for the life of me, I have no idea where the others I usually work with have gone at this hour. If any of the king’s usual guard came then they’d end up like those poor souls over there!” She gestured at the soldiers who were still profusely bleeding, crumpled near a wall. Bleeding meant they weren’t dead yet. Not that her magic could cure everything if this didn’t finish quickly.
”Whether you shatter this crystal or not, I’ll have a long night ahead of me trying to heal everyone you nearly killed! And even I can’t bring back the dead.” She scowled. That brief flash of anger was fading again and slowly, ever so slowly, she lowered her arms. ”Destroy the crystal if you want. I don’t even know what it does quite honestly, but I have the feeling it will set the city back terribly and make it a sitting duck for invasion and might be quite the bitch to replace. This city has already suffered attacks from demons trampling a third of it with fires and then there was the time it was flooded so terribly by a sea monster that the docks were swept away, the levee broke, and countless people drowned. Then there’s all the times it’s had to deal with people like you. Who come here either seeking a fight because they’re bored and bloodthirsty or because they’re terribly confused.”
She shook her head. ”If it's all fine and dandy with you to add to their struggles and provoke Sonora to war then fine. Do it if it will make you feel better. But this world and everything in it operates on different rules than you know. Maybe you’re right. You’re almost certainly not. Are you willing to take that chance?”
[attr=class,bulk] It was strange, hearing the girl open up to her when they’d only just met. It made Mid feel both younger and older than she’d assumed. She was mature enough to tell what needed to be told, but young enough for an instant kind of vulnerability.
A vulnerability that Celes, unusually, understood.
”No, that’s…” she paused, looking for the right word. ”I was a war orphan myself, actually.” How could she say it so casually? Perhaps because she didn’t remember that part of her life. Perhaps because it had so little relevance to her despite it being the catalyst of her entire life. ”The empire – that’s the Geystahlian Empire, I know there are several in other worlds – took me and what must have been several others and experimented on us with magic. My procedures were successful and so I was raised as their soldier.” She paused. Did this really have the relevance to Mid’s life that she thought it did? Or was she merely taking the chance at vulnerability for herself?
”Power breeds war. It’s something we’d all be better off without,” she said, repeating those fateful words she’d told her emperor. Before Kefka had seen that war was the least of their problems. ”I joined the rebellion. I tried to stop all of the conquest that I’d once been a part of. I understand.”
Or she hoped she did. She hoped that Mid, this plucky young inventor, would believe her.
”You make whatever you see fit to make. I’m sure it will be a great help either way. Not everything has to be about fighting, you know.”
Fighting was all she knew. Either for the empire or against it. Fighting monsters in a barren waste or standing off against a god. That’s why she had no real interest in returning to the ruined world she’d left behind. That world needed more people like Mid. The kind that could think of ways to rebuild and help people without wielding a sword. They no longer needed a soldier to defend them, and that was all Celes had ever been good for.
The more that Mid spoke, the more that Celes liked her. They’d only just met. She couldn’t exactly call them friends, but she could see it happening in time. Celes gave the girl a warm smile as she spoke of her late, adopted father. There was love there even as the girl insulted him. Celes couldn’t say she wasn’t a little jealous, really, but such was the life of an orphan. Some were taken in by kind men who did their best for the world and the child they raised inside it. Some were stolen away by a conquering empire and turned into weapons of war.
She was glad that Mid had been one of the fortunate few.
”I’m sorry. We don’t,” Celes said with a shake of her head, ”There are plenty of blacksmiths in the city, however. We have a few that we work with. I could point you in their direction.”
She wondered briefly what kind of operation Mid’s father had been running to have his own blacksmith, but that was irrelevant. She had the feeling that his rebellion might have been a tad better organized than the Returners.
”I’ll let you know if we think of anything we need here. There might even be some projects around the city that could use your help. That is what we’re trying to do, after all. Help people.”
[attr=class,bulk] As it turned out, Mid hadn’t meant to turn a crossbow automatic which was all that Celes knew could be done with a crossbow, engineering-wise. But the girl’s head seemed to whir into motion at the suggestion as she grabbed a job request form off the desk, turned it over, and started immediately to sketch.
The gears in the girl’s head were already in motion, and Celes’ weak protests that they had other paper could stop them. To Celes’ surprise, Mid was talking almost exactly the same as Edgar did whenever someone wasn’t around to stop him from bragging about every feature of his inventions with loving detail. When Mid finished her sketch, it was…more or less exactly what she’d seen in Edgar’s hands a hundred times.
”Oh,” was all she could manage, staring at the sketch in surprise before Mid suddenly changed her mind, crossed out the image, and crumpled the paper into her pocket. ”Wait! I needed…that…”
Too late. The girl was already onto her next idea.
A feeling of dread crept over her. She would be working with Mid soon, she had no doubts about that. Even as the girl went onto her real intentions which involved some ridiculous contraptions with a potion and a lemon, she’d already proved herself in Celes’ eyes. That auto-crossbow design had been instantaneous, improvised, and as far as Celes was aware, more or less correct. It didn’t matter if she drafted something silly every now and then, it was clear to anyone with eyes that despite the girl’s bravado, she was in fact something of a genius.
She’d be a fool not to hire her. Which was exactly where the dread came in.
Celes could already tell that this girl was a whirlwind, and soon, she’d be her responsibility.
She seemed grateful, at least, as Celes offered her the informational pamphlet. Or was she more impressed? Either way, she was quite nice about it, and even nicer when she explained her motivation. Celes couldn’t help but smile.
”Your father sounds like a lovely man,” she said because it was true. Starting an organization just to help people and then raising his daughter to do the same without any expectation of repayment? Celes didn’t know much about parenting, but whoever this man was, he seemed to have done quite the job at it.
”Of course, we’ll have you,” she said. ”We could use the help of a genius around here.” She shook her head, trying not to smile. ”We have rooms upstairs. They’re not much, but you’re free to use them if you need somewhere to stay. You can use Caius’ workbench for now. He’s always tinkering with his weapons and whatnot so I imagine it must be stocked with something. I’ll show you when you’re ready.”
She didn’t know how Caius would feel about someone else using his toolboxes. She imagined he wouldn’t care one way or the other so long as some good came from it, but it still wasn’t quite Celes’ to offer.
Oh well. What’s done was done.
”Just make a list of anything you need, and I’ll send some of the newer recruits out to find it. They could use some discipline anyway.” Now wasn’t that an idea? Instead of insisting on push-ups or whatever else when a man misbehaved, the punishment would be a shopping trip on the whims of a plucky inventor. That sounded much more effective.
”We’ll pay you for every invention you offer us. Think of it as contract work. Between that, you’re welcome to stay here. We’ll have to budget for any parts you might need – anything beyond that will have to come out of your pocket unfortunately – but I think it would be worth our investment.”
Celes didn’t know why, but she felt an almost instinctive fondness for the girl in front of her. Despite Mid’s apparent arrogance, her whirlwind of a mind, and a tongue that seemed to never stop wagging, there was something about her that Celes simply liked. Maybe it was her resemblance to Edgar. Maybe Celes simply liked to see a strong-willed, principled young woman.
[attr=class,bulk] Celes wasn’t stupid enough to think that the fight was over. Not with a man like that, but she at least thought, as she watched him freeze into a glacial prison adhered to the stone wall, eyes widening with panic, that she might have a moment to breathe.
That was, unfortunately for her and all of Torensten, not the case.
No sooner had her ice taken its hold before it shattered again. Not in the way that it was supposed to shatter, but in a way that made it lose its hold entirely and send sizzling droplets of water through the air like mist. Celes stared at the blazing inferno that had replaced the man in front of her and she stumbled back, shoving her hands together and through her incantation in a desperate attempt to cast again.
But it was too late, and she knew it.
The thing that approached her looked a bit like the swordsman she’d locked in ice, but looked quite a bit more like a demon, or maybe an esper. Fire cracked in seams along his skin, highlighted his hair, burst from the almost reptilian plating that encased his arms, and his eyes, burning before in hatred, now burned a deep, unnerving blue. Every part of her was screaming to run away, but perhaps it was because she knew of the espers, she knew of Terra, and she knew the nature of magic that she stayed put, even as he spoke with a voice that sounded as though it had been scraped against a pit of jagged embers.
He wasn’t talking quite the same as before. Something about Celes’ magic had changed that.
Where before he’d done nothing but shout nonsense accusations, now he seemed to almost…pity her? It was still all nonsense, of course, but her “nonsense to reality” translation skills were working as well as usual, she could at least gather that much. It would have been even easier to understand him if it hadn’t sounded like his own larynx had caught fire, but it also sounded as though he thought he was somehow doing good.
And here he was. Striding confidently towards her (or rather, striding towards the crystal), practically bleeding magic in what she could only assume was something like Terra’s trance. She could hardly fend him off before, and now? Well, he’d shrugged off her best magic as though it hadn’t been cast and now he was on fire.
She didn’t stand a chance. Not alone, at least, and while she would have told any one of her recruits, friends, or allies to prioritize her own survival and flee while she had the chance, she did something else entirely.
Something that was very stupid and perhaps more than a little suicidal.
”Stop!” Adrenaline thrust her forwards, not stopping to think for a moment as she thrust herself between him and the crystal, arms outstretched and entirely defenseless. ”You’re not where you think you are!”
She was almost glad for the hammering of her own heart in her ears because it didn’t give her a chance to consider just how much of an absolute monumental idiot she was being.
”No one’s coming!” she said, panting, almost stumbling over the words. ”No one’s coming! We have time! So just listen to me!”
Excellent, a small, almost insignificant part of her brain told her. Tell the demon man with a five foot sword that you don’t have any back-up. A brilliant plan, that!
”If you try to cast, I’ll just negate it again, and I don’t think you want to kill me! So just. Listen!” She bit her tongue, wondering if instinct would tell her what to say again because she certainly couldn’t think straight enough to come up with a plan. Thankfully, it did. ”Nothing is what you think it is! You’re confused! If you still want to destroy that crystal then fine! It doesn’t mean anything to me! But first, let’s just talk, alright? Because you’re about to make a terrible mistake, and it’s going to hurt people!”
[attr=class,bulk] For how quickly Yuffie changed her tune, Celes had to wonder why no one had ever taken a stand with her before.
The girl was frantic, waving her arms around, making wild-eyed excuses that were just as ridiculous as the ones before. Only now, it seemed, she was truly desperate. It almost made Celes feel guilty for going to such extremes when clearly the girl cared very much about her place among them.
Almost.
But as Yuffie dashed back inside, promising to do as she was told, Celes couldn’t help but feel a tinge of satisfaction. Yuffie, she assumed, wasn’t a terrible child. She was immature. Entitled. Loud. Full of unnecessary bravado. All of that was true, but she didn’t seem cruel at least, and if her reaction had told her one thing, it was that the girl was quite desperate to belong.
That was a normal teenage experience, wasn’t it? Celes wracked her memory for stories that those with more conventional childhoods had told her. She couldn’t think of any. But that was what she got, running about with rebels and outcasts, wasn’t it?
Yuffie was gone for a few minutes this time which was…not enough to properly clean the mess of a broken potion bottle, but it was markedly better than the first time. Her attitude was better too. Celes could have done without all the pleading, but she far preferred it to childish power plays.
”It’s clean? So when I walk back in, I’ll find the potions on the counter, the floor swept free of glass, and the spill gone?” Celes fixed the girl with a stern look. She wasn’t exactly certain what a parent was supposed to act like, but this felt something like it. Perhaps she wasn’t quite so terrible with children as she’d once thought.
No matter how the girl answered, the effort was enough. This hadn’t really been about the potions at all, really. It was about the girl’s attitude, and with it changed so did Celes’ resolve. ”Fine. You can be a Dragonblade. For now. But you’re on probation. You may have fought gods before, but so have I. So have many of us. I care less about your usefulness in a fight and more how you’ll represent our name.”
She shook her head. ”I grew up a soldier,” she said. ”I became a general when I was eighteen. I then defected for the rebellion, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still remember what I was taught. A true leader isn’t the most powerful person in the room. It’s the one who shoulders the responsibilities of others. I train the recruits here. Their actions are on me, and if they can’t follow orders, I know their blood will be on my hands when they get themselves killed.”
It was a terrible weight, really, one she’d been forced to carry more times than she could count. First it had been on the battlefield for conquests she’d instigated. Now it was the lives of mercenaries. Their deaths had been markedly fewer, but each one weighed on her just the same.
If only she hadn’t given them such a difficult task. If only she’d trained them better. If only…
She sighed. ”I’m going to set a few ground rules, Yuffie. First, I need you to stop claiming to be one of our leaders. You’re also not to give orders to Tomoe. She doesn’t work for you. Second, you’re to follow my orders – when you’re on Dragonblades business, at least. This isn’t the military, but I am your superior. If I tell you to do something, it’s because I have a good reason for it.
[attr=class,bulk] If she had hoped to grab the man’s attention then her plan had worked. It had worked a little too well one might say.
”Ugh!” Celes gritted her teeth, bracing herself as he threw himself and that sword into a full on assault, eyes blazing with rage. From his words, she could only imagine that he was either deeply confused or deeply disturbed – possibly both though it wasn’t as though she really had the chance to listen. It was all she could do to stand her ground as he struck her blade again and again with enough force to cause a shockwave of pain up her arms and into her clenched jaw.
Why didn’t she have back-up? Caius, Yuna, Terra, Yuffie. There were at least half a dozen Dragonblades she would have trusted with this kind of task, and yet on the night that it came, they were all missing. If Yuna or Terra had been at her side, she could have taken risks knowing that someone could heal her as she gave them opportunities to strike with their magic. If it had been one of the others then she could have taken that role, slinging spells from a distance and healing them both when necessary.
But no. She just had to come alone. Where she was weakest. Where this deranged embodiment of misplaced fury wouldn’t give her a single chance to do anything but keep him from taking her head.
It was all she could do to hiss between her teeth, one parry at a time. ”I. Don’t. Know. What. You’re. Talking about!”
Yes, that would clearly get through to him.
Finally, his strength overwhelmed her. She took one blow too many, and she felt her strength give under the weight of his sword, lowering her blade and leaving her open for attack. She felt her eyes widen as she attempted to back away though she knew it wouldn’t be enough – not from a sword like that and not when he had the power to warp straight towards her. She expected the blow to come. She expected him to stab her straight through, but he didn’t take the chance. Instead he was the one to back away. She saw fire gathering at the palm of his hand in a great spherical projectile.
Once more, she acted on instinct. Once more, she took a risk. She raised her sword, but this time not defensively. Instead, she activated its runic abilities and thrust it over her head.
The projectile fired. She felt its heat racing towards her, towards the crystal, while a few of the the weaker spells found their mark, the larger of them and several others were drawn almost magnetically into her blade.
Its power traveled down her sword, into her fingertips, into her blood. She felt its warmth mixing almost unbearably with her own icy power, bolstering it as her eyes fixed determinedly upon him and she shoved her hands together as though in prayer, her sword grasped tightly between her fingers as she muttered the words of her spell.
This was the opportunity she needed. He was at a distance. A distance he could close in an instant, but she wouldn’t need longer than that.
”Blizzaga!” She raised her hand and the air chilled and cracked around her as she directed her spell directly at him in a series of icicles that erupted like towering stalagmites along the floor, each of them piercing upwards and then shattering in turn, freezing everything they touched as they burst into icy shrapnel.
Celes stood, panting, trying to ignore the ache in her arms from where she’d contended with his blows. He wasn’t the only one with a few surprises up his sleeves.
[attr=class,bulk] How old was this girl? Fifteen? Sixteen? Celes could have laughed though she knew better. Instead, she merely raised her eyebrows as Yuffie, apparent god-slayer and hero to the realm, went about making her excuses. It was pure childish whining, and that was all there was to it. She hoped to have her way by merely exhausting Celes into giving it to her. At that age, Celes had been living in barracks, waking up every morning at dawn to prove herself to a training yard of preening young men who wanted nothing more than an excuse to dismiss her.
The longer Yuffie talked, the more Celes became convinced that no one had ever said no to her in her entire life. Gau was more principled, and he would eat raw meat off the floor if you let him.
”I suppose you have a point,” she said as she looked the girl over, utterly unimpressed. ”Self-discipline does require one to stay true to their core beliefs, and if yours require that you never clean then I suppose there’s nothing else for it.” Celes crossed her arms, fixing Yuffie with an icy look of absolute and unquestionable resolution.
”I’ll take that as your resignation then. From this moment on you’re no longer a Dragonblade.”
Perhaps Caius had taken her in out of a sense of pity. This was certainly not a move that he would have ever taken if that was the case. It wasn’t a move that Celes particularly wanted to take either considering the girl might simply walk out the door never to return. And then what? Perhaps she would be able to take care of herself. Perhaps she wouldn’t. But she’d know a place she could go once the world had humbled her a little, at least. Celes had no patience for anyone who would grind their reputation into the mud.
[attr=class,bulk] The apparent maniac turned to face her, and in the dim light she could make out a few features. His messy dark hair and scruffy beard. His cape fastened over a bare chest practically bulging from a laced leather shirt. And the sword. He had had a sword, and a rather large one at that. Just her luck.
His voice was low yet burned with hatred. It set the hair on the back of her neck on end even as she couldn’t help an incredulous look at the actual words he said.
”What?” was all she managed before he was upon her. He didn’t rush towards her blade, but rather disappeared in a flash of fire, his sword swinging as he launched himself forward.
It was only instinct that saved her. She managed to raise her sword just in time to block his as the full force of him bore down on her and she grunted with the effort of holding him back. It didn’t work. While she managed to keep her own blade against his, his strength and whatever magic had propelled him forced her back by about a foot, teeth grit as she kept her balance and her stance, but only just barely. A swordsman and a magic user then.
Damn it all!
She glared up at him, towering over her in height with an advantage in strength and speed that seemed almost unfair. As thought combat were ever fair. And what was it that she always told her recruits, again?
That raw strength didn’t matter. Neither did confidence or the size of your blade. It was all in how you used it.
She slipped her blade from his, ducking as she did so and taking several steps aside, spinning around to face him again as she tried to place herself between him and the horrified mages who had been attending the crystal. She glanced at them and gestured curtly towards the door with a short nod of her head. ”Go!”
She knew how to handle civilians in a disaster area. When in shock, a particularly authoritative command was all it took to break through it, and in this case, the mages took no time in running. Part of Celes wondered if that had truly been her best idea. The mages of Torensten weren’t exactly weak by any stretch of the word, and they could have provided her the very back-up she so desperately needed, but as she paced to keep herself between them and the maniacal, magic-wielding swordsman in front of her, she knew it was the right call. The mages might have known their way around spells, but they weren’t exactly warriors. Her life, with everything she’d done with it, meant a lot less than theirs. ”I’ll take care of this.”
How did she plan to do that? A fine question when she was on her own against a behemoth of a man who could close the distance between them in an instant. Perhaps he had integrated his magic into his swordplay, but she needed a moment of concentration. And all her real power was in her magic.
”Look down on the rest of you?” she asked as the last of the mages left the room and the door closed behind them. She didn’t need to make sense. She didn’t need to make logical choices, even, so long as she could keep his eyes on her. Not the mages. Not the desperately wounded soldiers. Not the Core Crystal. Only on her. ”I don’t know what ‘rest of them’ you’re talking about, but you’re right in one thing. After seeing what you did to the men outside, I certainly look down on you!”
[attr=class,bulk] After a long day of overseeing training regimens, helping Tomoe with the accounts, and worst of all dealing with Yuffie, Celes had finally allowed herself a break.
She sat sprawled out on the couch in the lobby, her head tilted back over the top cushions and her eyes closed. She had to hand it to Caius. Though his idea of installing those crystals of ice magic had originally made her uneasy (they reminded her far too much of magicite for her liking), they were something of a godsend in the long, hot, summer months of Torensten when she was exhausted and really only needed to rest. She was looking forward to time in her room later, perhaps with a half-decent book in her hand, and then a bath. A bath sounded heavenly around now, and nothing short of disaster would dissuade her from it.
The doors slammed open, startling her awake as she threw herself to her feet and reached for a sword at her hip that wasn’t there.
”The palace is under attack!”
”Some maniac is trying to destroy the Core Crystal!”
”He’s mowing down everyone in his path!”
”Please! Somebody help us! The people there are in danger! The King is in danger!”
Celes stared at them, wild-eyed and uncomprehending as adrenaline clouded her mind in time with the pounding of her heart. Then, slowly, what they said started to dawn on her, and her panic turned to a look of horror.
”Now?” she asked though that really wasn’t the problem, was it? No, the problem was the apparent maniac storming the Castle Argyle. A maniac that was apparently beyond the capacity of the entire castle guard. An outlander maniac most likely. Which meant that she was the best one equipped to handle the situation. ”Damn it all!”
Celes straightened, fixing the king’s messengers with a steely look. ”Tell them to evacuate who they can. Caius isn’t here right now, but I’ll handle this in his stead. The Dragonblades are coming.”
The messengers didn’t seem to know how to feel about that, but Celes was already storming off, throwing her usual yellow jacket to the side as she went to collect her armor and weaponry. In truth, she would have responded to this whether Caius was here or not, but she didn’t like going in without someone fighting by her side, be it Caius or Yuna or even Yuffie, damn her. But Caius was in Sonora and Yuna was in Provo and Yuffie was gods knew where at this hour and so it was only Celes, and Celes alone.
To stop a maniac hell-bent on the city’s destruction. Lucky her.
She changed quickly, attaching her pauldrons, bracers, and grieves with the expertise of a soldier before redoing her hair so as to keep it from her eyes and grabbing her sword from the wall. Hopefully, her swordsmanship would be enough to match a swordsman’s own. And if it was mage which awaited her then perhaps she would simply absorb all of their spells with her runic blade until they grew tired and went home.
It was an idea, at least.
It didn’t take long for her to find the source of the problem. Even if the messengers hadn’t directed her to the palace, she would have known exactly where to go from the fire and screaming. She sprinted towards it in her now more practical boots, pushing through the fleeing crowds to approach the gates rather than leaving them. She only needed to identify herself as a Dragonblade before being bid to enter and to hurry at that.
The path ahead was strewn with blood and wounded men.
Her heart ached as she rushed past them, taking the stone stairs to the crystal chamber two at a time. It was usually her on rescue duty. It usually her magic stabilizing the fallen and helping them evacuate on their own. She wanted to help. It felt callous simply leaving them, but she had to trust that any remaining soldiers would collect them and take them somewhere safer, preferably with medical care. Because this time, at this hour, there was no one left to put an end to this madness, and as she burst into the Core Crystal’s chamber, Celes was well and truly alone.
She saw the soldiers first, wounded, bleeding, collapsed, and burnt upon the floor. The crystal’s light bathed them in an eerie blue which flickered ominously as a shadow passed in front of the source. It was the shadow of a man, and while she could at first see him only in silhouette, she knew immediately that he was the one she was after.
”Stop where you are!” Celes pulled her sword, readying her stance as she did so. Her voice was cold as ice. ”The city’s suffered enough without you!”
[attr=class,bulk] The first thing the girl offered wasn’t an introduction, but a suggestion.
Celes saw the way the girl’s eyes lit up even more, glancing about the room as though in constant motion with the machination of her eyes. The way she spoke, as though she could hardly keep up with her own flurry of ideas, reminded her quite a bit of Edgar, and Celes could help a smile. It had helped her mood some to be back inside where the air was cool and she didn’t have to deal with fool-hardy men all day. Now this…
This girl would most certainly have the mind to create something as ridiculous as the bio-blaster.
”A bell system,” she repeated thoughtfully. ”That isn’t a bad idea,” and she meant it. Why something like that hadn’t occurred to her before was almost astounding, but then, Celes’ own genius came in strategy and a sword. Everyone had their talents, and while they sometimes overlapped with the fight at hand, they were all valuable in their own way.
Only after the girl had offered Celes her first idea for the Wyvern’s Rest did she finally introduce herself as Midadol. Mid for short. She also explained that she wasn’t native to Zephon and had no idea what had happened to lead her here.
’You and me both.’
Celes would have stopped her right there to give her usual explanation (or ’The Zephon Training Course’ as she and Caius jokingly called it), but it seemed that whenever Mid got going, it was hard for her to stop. She had a proposal. A rather simple proposal, really, that Celes would have been a fool to pass up assuming the girl was anywhere near as good an engineer as Edgar had been, and as she was willing to back up her claim, Celes had no real reason to doubt that she was.
”A crossbow? We don’t, but did you mean to turn it automatic?” This was not her area of expertise, and Celes heard the own uncertainty in her voice. Thank the Goddesses that she’d listened to Edgar’s ideas every now and then. Enough to repeat them at least.
”You’ve really thought this through,” she added before giving a slight shake of her head. ”If you’re lost, you don’t need to offer us anything for that. Caius and I, the leadership here, we were both in the same position as you. It’s hard, waking up and having no idea where you’ve gotten to. We have two missions at the Dragonblades. The first is to train the city’s forces to ready for disaster and to respond to it ourselves. The second is to help people like us. Like you.”
She opened up a drawer in the desk and started rummaging inside. This really would be easier if…
Where had Caius put them, anyway?
”One moment. I think this might help if I could only…find it...”
After another minute of shifting through papers, she finally did. It wasn’t exactly the most prolific of work. They’d been on a budget when they’d had the small booklets bound together. They were each only a few pages long, but they’d both thought it worth the effort considering how much time it might save.
”Here it is. Though I can answer any questions if you have them,” she said, handing over what they had taken to calling their personal brochure, a copy of ‘So You’ve Been Transported to Zephon.’ The title had been Caius’ idea. Celes had found it hilarious.
”Inside, you’ll find a map as well as our theories, some advice on getting started, and a list of people we’ve met in case you’re looking for someone. Or trying to avoid them.”
To a scientifically minded girl such as herself, she hoped the booklet would be more useful than her usual speech. Celes was tired of giving it.
”As for your inventions, we’d love to have them. The bell idea was brilliant on its own.” She smiled at the girl, a little warmer this time. ”And of course we’d pay you in gil. We’re a tad tight at the moment, but if you have something worth implementing then it’s worth getting paid for. How else are you going to get back on your feet?”
