"Lightning Huntress..." Lyn whispered to herself as she shut her eyes in concentration. Her severed tethers was each a flawed reminder of her mortality and emotional awareness. But just this once, she wanted to revitalize her tethers to gain the heightened prowess to overcome the titan; but even more, herself.
She reminded herself of the time when she battled against Kaiden's awakened forced after being manipulated by Seth and Teize. To scale the beast, she had to imbue her spirit with the one thing that represented ferocity to her; a lion, and all its might was all she needed. Opening her eyes once again, her emotional eyes stared down blankly at the titan in the distance, coupling her tethers together once more in a numbed state. She was primed and ready, joining hands with Claire's shoulder to give her the same strength that she did.
"WE FIGHT!" The two of them shouted in unison.
In a blinding flare, the two's twin wings burst into existence; one light, and one dark. Their hair's hues morphed into violet and blonde respectfully. Before Ardine's eyes could adjust to the two's sudden power, the pair launched at hyper velocity, blades trailing streaks of light and darkness as they carved through the air toward the titan's towering frame.
With their hands entwined, their overflowing aether ignited their bodies, resulting in the creation of a radiant vortex of starlight and shadow. They pierced through the back of the titan's muscular frame, carving a hole through where black ink flushed out like a waterfall of blood. Arisz watched from the ground as Lyn and Claire separated yet floated beside each other, creating an angelic presence in the skies.
He kept quiet, knowing the fluctuation of power that they created was more than he could speak about.
"ENVIE! DESIR!" The titan roared as it clutched its chest in agony. "You will all suffer for your transgressions-"
As their powers burst asunder, they each flashed and flew vertically with their blades at the helm, slicing against both of the titan's eyes. They reappeared together behind it midair, staring down at it with contempt.
"Shut up, bitch." Claire insulted.
The titan met them head-on as the two coordinated a number of precise slices through its body. All of them were imbued with Lyn's flame and Claire's light, detonating with each subsequent strike. The weakened titan struck down toward Lyn with its pummeling fist, hoping to catch her midway, but Claire's left hand entered the fray, instantly expunging the existence of it in the flash of a light.
As it began to strengthen its resolve against the duo's punishing blows, the titan's claws swept wide as a detonation of blue aether sent the two flying away from pure force. The two spun out, wings folding as the two slammed into the stone rubble below. Claire screamed in pain as the titan struck downward; she intercepted the strike with her gleaming folded blade, but the impact hurled her backward until she was barely visible from the battlefield.
Luckily, Arisz's portal caught her mid-flight, and it reopened beside the titan's face with Claire diving toward its torso. Imbuing her blade with the astral power from her left hand, the speed Arisz granted her gave her enough momentum to slice the titan's entire torso off, leaving the bottom half below its abdomen as nothing but fodder. Lyn watched as the lower half of the titan slammed against the stone ground, sending an blazing shockwave that erupted torrents of force out in all directions.
Claire landed beside the severed limb with Lyn catching her, with the two believing they had won the battle. But oddly enough, the titan's upper torso remained suspended in midair, reducing its weight load by myriads of amounts to fight back. The white-haired titan vanished from thin air, distorting time and space to reappear behind Lyn and Claire, priming a planet-sized fist to strike down upon the two.
"MOVE!" Lyn shouted, kicking them both apart to evade the attack.
The titan's upper torso warped into the gap between them with its arms outstretched and its palms glowing. Blue aether spiraled into twin vortices, erupting in a thunderous blast, hurling Lyn and Claire through rows of the stone sculptures from opposite directions.
Both of them were knocked on their backs, losing strength with each flop backward. As Claire recovered with her folded blade in hand, the titan warped in front of her with his colossal fist sent for a punch. Anticipating her counter, he swung the other fist from her flank. The blow launched her skyward until his massive hand closed around her, trapping her mid‑air.
Arisz blinked from his portal atop the titan's massive clenched fist and drove his spear down with all his weight to free her. Gritting her teeth against the crushing pressure, Claire wrenched her left hand loose and thrust her palm against the clenched fist. Surging light flashed against fist in an instant, scattering it into nothingness. Both she and Arisz free fell, with Arisz summoning a portal to warp them to safety.
In the distance, Lyn shot from the ground like a thunderbolt, crackling the ground beneath her. She held her Déraciné blazed with infused energy, its edge trembling with power as she aimed toward the titan's back with the hopes of driving it through.
The titan spun around swiftly and summoned magical infused walls against her, blockading her path. Lyn sliced her sword outward and curved her wing downward, projecting her toward the sky to evade the walls. Yet it was exactly what the titan envisioned happening, for it warped above Lyn with both of its fists clamped together in a ball, ready to swing down to pummel her toward the abyss.
Claire and Arisz collapsed from the portal beside Ardine, whose rifle surged itself to maximum power as its tesla coil overloaded once more. Sparks crawled along the barrel with it humming at a high pitch at its lethal charge. Ardine's eyes snapped to Arisz. "GET ME UP THERE!" He commanded.
"He's going to kill you!" Claire cried.
"Not if I do it first." Ardine muttered, rotating his shoulders.
Arisz thrust his hand forward, tearing open a portal beneath Ardine and dropping him into position. With a flick of his other palm, he redirected his magic, warping Ardine outward beneath the titan's right eyelid. Ardine seized the flesh of its eyelid with his left hand to anchor himself, with his rifle blazing with overcharged energy as he leveled it upward on his right. He was ready to fire just as the titan prepared to strike Lyn.
"Eat this, you ugly bastard!" Ardine shouted. He pulled the trigger, firing an electromagnetic laser through the entire titan's skull, annihilating its muscle, bone, and everything else in its wake. The titan slumped backward as half of its face struggled to regenerate from the scalding heat, saving Lyn just in time for her to swoop toward Ardine to catch him.
The rifle's backlash scorched Ardine's right hand to ruin, leaving him limp and unconscious. Lyn darted him to Claire and Arisz for support. Claire dropped beside him and pressed her fingers to his neck. Luckily, his pulse still was beating, but the same couldn't be said for long because of his charred hands.
"Watch him," Lyn said, snapping her enraged eyes toward the wounded titan. Rage tightened her voice for what he had done to Ardine. "I'm taking it down. Arisz, bring me close to him again."
"An unwise decision-" Arisz stuttered.
"Just do it," Lyn seethed, spreading her black wing outward once more. "Keep Claire and Ardine safe."
Arisz shook his head in disagreement, as he was torn by the doubt of him protecting her. Yet he couldn't refuse the request of such a beautiful woman. He summoned a portal below Lyn and warped her as close to the titan's bare legs as possible.
She flared her wing wide once more, driving herself backward to carry enough distance between herself and the titan. She drew in a deep and steady breath as she shut her eyes. She lifted her palms and pressed them together at the wrists. She began gathering the aether across the vicinity of the arena, charging it into her palms as the air thickened with electric tension. Violet sparks of raw energy flickered across her skin, tinging her skin with restless lightning. The ground beneath her trembled in a fit of gathered power, until a tremendous surge of aether crackled through her forearms.
Opening her lightning studded eyes, Lyn dispersed the aether in a piercing beam toward the titan. "LIGHTS OUT!" She cried, firing the raw energy with her palms collapsed together.
The titan roared in an outburst of agony, clutching its ruined eye in pain. With a surge of fury, it thrust its right colossal hand forward, unleashing a beam of charged blue aether against its palm, sending it straight for Lyn's violet beam. Its collision split the arena with a deafening crack of lightning that seemed to split the atmosphere into pieces. Light and force tore against each other, with both violet and blue energies spiraling into a storm that shook the ground and bent the air.
Lyn struggled to keep the beam together with the titan's colliding force overpowering hers. Just as she was about to dodge out of the way, Claire stormed beside her and placed her palms on the violet beam.
"What are you doing?!" Lyn cried. "I said to stay with the others!"
"No way!" Claire shouted, spreading her angelic wing out in tandem. "We're taking him down. Together!"
Light surged through Lyn's violet beam, swelling as Claire's own aether poured into it. Both of the light and dark currents weaved together, expanding into a storm of violet streaked with silver sparks. The arena trembled beneath the force of their attack while the air itself rippled, bending under the strain of their unleashed power.
For a moment, their victory seemed inevitable until the titan unveiled a secret tactic they didn't seem coming. It detached its own left hand from its torso and reared it toward their flank to strike them aside. Yet just before it was about to strike, Arisz warped with precise timing, knocking it out of the way with the combined weight forcing his shoulder across.
Just as the titan's colossal fist was about to plummet toward the ground with a shockwave that would stop Lyn and Claire's combined power, Arisz vaulted from the large fist with a flip. As he descended from midair, he thrust his palm outward and conjured an immense portal, larger than any he had ever conjured. His strength was greatly waning, for it would be his final portal before he needed to regain his power with time.
Luckily, the titan's fist plunged into the rift, only to reemerge an instant later above its own head. "Go, my apprentices!" Arisz shouted before collapsing to the ground.
The redirected blow crashed against the titan's face with devastating force. The titan staggered beneath the weight of its own strength and roared in pain, echoing throughout the arena. Its palm launched upward, ending its attack and leaving itself vulnerable for the end.
Lyn and Claire roared with furiousness in unison, unveiling their fused beam once more toward the center of its torso. The projectile tore through the titan's chest and the violet flame split its body into suspended limbs. The searing flame from Lyn and Claire's power prevented it from regenerating any further. As the beam continued to launch itself against the titan, it propelled him backward with an unstoppable amount of force, flinging it miles across the battlefield.
"Envie... Desir... never meant to be..." The titan whispered once more before the end.
As the two collapsed to the ground with their bodies trembling with exhaustion, they both propped their heads up to stare at the the distant beam they blasted outward. It erupted in a cataclysm of aether, sending a pillar of flame and energy skyrocketing into the heavens. The explosion cascaded outward in a massive shockwave, which rippled across the arena. The ground quaked in its raw power, shattering all of the stone sculptures across the realm.
Lyn and Claire's wings vanished, as did their hidden power. Lyn reached out toward Claire's shoulder and patted it, proud of her bravery in supporting her. "I think it's gone," She said. "We did it."
Claire coughed as ash from the beam entered her nostrils. Each of her slow breaths were well deserved, for her small frame couldn't keep up with the amount of power she dispersed at once. "I really need a break..." She whined, swirling over on her back. "Fuck this place."
Lyn laughed with what little energy she had. Her lungs were filled with smoke and ash, all expunged with large coughs following after. "What do humans do when they're tired?" She asked, remembering the time she denied the strawberries back at the inns in Gietha.
"A nice bath following a nice meal..." Claire continued. "This time without all the magical dreamy bullshit. Maybe in a nice place called Buchasa?"
"Why does that name sound so familiar?" Lyn asked.
"It's where the old man lives. He invited me to come live with him back there once this is all over... and I don't think I've ever been this excited before."
Lyn smiled with her voice turning into pondering thought. "Probably well‑maintained and full of… people?" She said as she leaned toward Claire, whose grin gleamed with unrestrained excitement.
"I wonder how it really is," Claire said, gleaming up at the foggy sky. "A new home with a fresh new start... is all I ever really wanted," She turned toward Lyn. "Do you ever think about what you want after this is all over, Lyn?"
"Never have," Lyn quickly said. "But the Figment festival made me happy. Maybe I would settle down there instead."
Arisz warped beside Lyn and Claire with Ardine in his hands, placing him down beside them. The two of them gradually lifted themselves from their backs, worried about Ardine's condition.
"Is he going to be okay?" Claire asked, bending over Ardine with a concerned gaze.
"Stray your eyes away from these illusions, apprentices," Arisz said with a firm voice. "His injuries are all but real. This internal conflict resides in your collective minds. We've expunged the chaos from within. Now... all that's left is for all three of you to wake up."
"We're still... asleep?" Lyn asked.
Arisz grunted, looking far into the distance. "See you all on the other side."
Lyn and Claire turned as a wave of white nothingness rippled from the impact of their beam, crumbling the arena with it. As the void advanced toward them in silence, Lyn, Claire, and Ardine were swallowed by it all, wiping their existence away from the dreamscape.
In a matter of seconds, the three, joined with Arisz, returned to the bottom of the abyss where they once were taken away. The hooded figure, along with Alfaic who continued to stand his ground in front of them, reappeared before the three as if nothing had happened. None of their wounds from the dreamscape were visible. Ardine also appeared unscathed from his sacrificial attack, which all had been dreamt up since the beginning of their abduction into the dreamscape.
However, they carried a trove of hidden knowledge etched away in their memories. Ardine's gaze lingered on the back of Alfaic's head, realizing his resemblance of the man who stole his wife in his haunting dream was accurate. Claire's suspicion sharpened, recalling the artist's chamber where she had been trapped with a pompous figure bearing the same likeness as his appearance. And Lyn, remembering the vision of the disc and the colossal tree in the spring, certain that all that she had witnessed was connected to the history of METIS in some way.
The museum was one of those sketches she had seen, but remained unexplored.
The hooded figure staggered before them, clutching their head with a pained grunt. A faint, feminine voice slipped through their voice, yet the hood continued to shroud their identity in mystery.
Must see...
Must feel...
Pain...
I don't understand...
Voices from the scarred rocks in the sky spoke once more, originating from unknown direction.
Directly in front of Alfaic was a pulse of aether that assimilated into its full form after seconds passed. The second to last Rot Mother fragment materialized at last, visibly casting its glimmering pale blue hue across the six that stood in its wake. Lyn approached Alfaic from the side, watching the fragment suspend itself between themselves and the hooded figure.
"Glad to know you're all safe," Alfaic said. "Is anyone hurt?"
"No," Lyn said. "I was concerned for you. Why did you just stand there? And why weren't you affected by the illusions?"
Alfaic remained still, declining to respond to Lyn's question.
"She asked you a question, Alfaic." Claire's voice cut sharp from behind. Even without turning, he felt the weight of her piercing stare and its intensity shooting straight into his mind from behind.
Ardine approached the front with his rifle drawn, pointing it at the hooded figure once more. "Try what you did before, and I'll kill you," He threatened. "We're going to take that fragment and go our merry way. If you want to live, I suggest you return to the surface."
"Cruel, but well deserved." Arisz echoed his verbal thoughts.
The hooded figure remained silent with their refusal toward Ardine's request hanging heavy in the abyssal arena. Silence deafened through the arena. Alfaic's gaze remained locked at the figure while Lyn and Ardine braced themselves for what was to come.
Then, from behind them, Claire stepped forward to break the silence. Her eyes were not menacing, but soft and unwavering. She extended her palm toward the figure with quiet compassion as the others watched her advancement.
Reunite...
No more...
Pain...
Claire pressed forward with the whispers from above circling her ears like ghostly echoes. She halted several feet from the hooded figure. The others stared in disbelief, with Ardine lowering his scope but keeping his rifle steady, while Lyn's eyes shimmered with rising concern. Arisz turned his back against the group with his spear clutched between his arms, kneeling in relaxation.
The name uttered from Claire's mouth amplified their concern by tenfold.
"Claire?" Claire called toward the figure.
Ardine exchanged glances with Lyn, confused at the decree.
The hooded figure lingered in silence at the call of the name. For a fleeting moment, they tilted their head downward and gazed into the waters below them. Claire's gasped as a hint of recognition struck her mind, for it was the same downward stare that the illusionary artiste version of herself had made in the dreamscape in response to her finishing the sketch of Lyn. Though the hood concealed the figure's face, Claire felt the weight of sorrow stretch down.
Lyn took a single step forward. An alternate version of Claire clouded her mind. Is this... really possible? She thought to herself.
"It's alright," Claire called to the figure with a soothing tone. "I know you're hurting right now. But everything's going to okay. You can talk to us. We're here to help-"
Suddenly, the figure lunged backward, seizing the blue fragment and placing it within their cloak. With a powerful leap backward, they retreated into the distance and sliced their right hand upward through the air.
"You ROTTEN-" Ardine cried, aiming his scope at the figure once more. Yet he wouldn't have any time to retaliate, for the cataclysm that came after would separate them all.
"NO!" Alfaic shouted.
The shallow waters of the abyss began to surge as a vortex spiraled upward before Claire, waves clawing at the air as the water level rose around them. The ground beneath their feet trembled with currents pulling in opposite directions, and the group felt themselves slowly being torn apart by the raging tide.
Lyn was the only one that remained calm as she splashed through the rising vicinity of the water. The twinkling astral stars and jagged rocks above were getting closer as the rising water level continued to propel her upward. She scattered her vision to look for any signs of Alfaic and the others, but she had to concentrate on saving herself.
She felt the waves dispersing her further and further from her original point as her tethers began to separate once more. Fear encroached in her heart. The thought of drowning amidst the middle of nowhere surged through her veins. There was nothing she could do to save herself, for her stamina was draining rapidly by the second. She took big gulps of air, but nothing could sustain her in the vicious tempest before her.
Waters continued to rise until it reached the top of the abyss. There was no escape.
Lyn closed her eyes and slumped backward in the water, suspended in nothingness. Her white jacket slipped off, revealing her bare shoulders and forearms, along with the tattoo embedded on her right shoulder. The swirling sound of water ceased entirely as she lost her consciousness amidst the terror.
Astra... A whisper echoed in her ears. Once everything's over, I'll be by your side to see you make it.
"Blade..." Lyn's garbled voice was drowned out by the tides.
Seconds later after the rising of the water led toward the landscapes above METIS, a pale hand reached toward Lyn's direction and dragged her out. A shimmering twinkle of light cast down upon her face.
She was saved.