"...Noted." The raid captain inclined her head in an unhappy tone towards Esben. Elly's words had her furrowing her brow inquisitively towards Solitude's walls. "I think we can chance a flyover just to see if Red's telling the truth. The other scout teams sent had all been planning to enter Solitude on foot, anyway. If Valheim's trying to keep anything from getting out, I doubt they have heavy weaponry pointed in the direction of anyone trying to approach from above."

She turned, starting to rally her men back onto the airship. Within minutes, all were back on board and the helm was alerted to their plans. The airship took off, aiming for a quick flyby at a fast enough speed to hopefully get in and out before any alarms were raised. The ship picked up speed as it approached the walls, Zeke on the deck with the Kirins, along with the entire raid squadron. All of them, that was, with the exception of the captain.

Below decks, the woman's face faded away as the engine room crew chief's body slid off of her blade, Loki grinning in her place.

"Greedy, greedy~" She hummed to herself, an orb of shadowy aether coalescing in her palm. "Had you but ran straight back, I wouldn't have had this opportunity. Ah, well. Enjoy the zombies!" The spell fired, and Loki vanished into the floor a moment after, narrowly evading the engine exploding.

Up top, the immediate impact could be felt by all, and the helmsman paled, realizing what had just happened, if not why.

"We've lost engines!" He screamed, just as the ship passed over the walls of Solitude. "Brace, braaaaace! We're going down!" The airship listed. Unable to maneuver, it came careening down straight towards a tall spire, jutting out of a manor building. And impacted.

___



Kayliss hadn't exactly been pleased when they'd radioed their return, explaining the specific circumstances of what was going on. Nevertheless, she met up with Galahad, Miina, Izayoi, and Garland as they disembarked a distance away from the actual fortress city, no less than two squadrons of armed men trailing her. For his part, Garland gave a brief nod of acknowledgement at the implied threat before promptly getting to business.

"I should hope my being here, unarmed and vastly outnumbered on neutral ground, proves my sincerity? In any regard, take this to your superiors." He fished a sealed bundle of documents out to hand over, and Kayliss prompted a soldier to approach and hold it with gloved hands.

"Only after it's been tested for poison, explosives, ensorcellments, all the bells and whistles. I'd say no insult intended, but we're past that." She replied coolly. "In the meantime, we're setting up a temporary holding cell for you."

Watching the proceedings, Izayoi stood next to Miina and Galahad, frowning.

"Where are the others of our party? Have they not reported back yet?"

Kayliss only shook her head in response. "You have a point. Falcon's Nest is about as close to the Alenmiers as it is to Solitude. But you're back anyway, and Solitude was always the goal. Take the crew and the ship, and get going. Remember, support and extraction only. Confirm Garland's words if you can, but I shouldn't need to tell you all that retrieving our people and yours comes first. Move out as soon as you're ready."

The wreckage of the crashed ship lay strewn about, and in and around it were bodies in various states of death: everything from very definitely in too many pieces to "actually, this guy might be alive if someone can do something". A certain red-headed mystral was not among those, instead perched – seemingly not much worse for wear than after his initial flight – on one of the slightly more intact pieces of wood.

It seemed his sister shared more than just general looks; the body language being every bit more feline than their warrior cousin. Ears flat, tail tight, and concerningly tense and low.

"Well, you wanted to look at Solitude, now you can do all the looking you want, and you even brought back a tour guide," he spoke up once it was clear that there were other survivors – namely, the Kirins, "I would show you the way out, but Valheim's going to have closed that exit, and I don't think all of you could cross the rooftops so easily. We need to get going somewhere fast, all this meat is going to get swarmed…"

”Don’t sell us short on preparation,”

Metal creaked and shifted as a rough-hewn growl sounded a moment after Zeke’s tirade, before the rightmost panel of twisted aluminum alloy was cast aside by an arm of black steel. Rudolf’s greathelm bore a few new scrapes and scuffs, but otherwise seemed little worse for wear even after the wreck. His eyes shifted behind the visor, more metal shifted behind his arm. ”We have three tour guides.”

Esben, Eliane, and Chisato were revealed in short order. The former two were as native to the city as anyone left within, at this point— and they no doubt would know the way towards what would pass for safe harbor. Not to mention…

“I was hoping we could just have Eos and Selene handle this bit. I didn’t say fly directly over— Loki got us, didn’t she?” More a rhetorical question than anything else; there was no real alternative candidate. Zeke had stayed within eyesight the whole time they were aboard, the engine conditions were verified before takeoff, and most importantly—

You are a terrible early warning system.

I had maybe half a second to smell the shadow on the aethereal wind. I work with what I get. It was still enough for you to get everybody to crash position.

The armored flatlander clicked his tongue, thumbing the pommel at his belt. The black spot on his soul coiled in response, no happier than he save for their argument. Disdain swirled around the pair of one.

Riddle me this: What’s a fundamental step in melanosis? What begins the process of transmutation, since you’ve been so encouraging of my alchemical interpretation of everything you do?

I am a literal shade, boy, spare me. Dissolution of the form is a fundamental concept, true. It can be leveraged to restructure your guise to that of another, true. I myself am familiar with the requisite magic. In my life, I wore other faces when the need arose. YOU riddle ME this: what would the practical use of such magic be, if it was so easily seen through by a feeble echo of the mages that developed it in the first place?

He supposed that was a good point, but it helped matters none.

Their initial suspicions were well-placed, in the end, but they’d still been caught off-guard once their mission parameters had changed. Flying right in was already enough to set the lot of them on edge, not being remotely close even to Eliane’s intent— but the strike had come without warning, save for his passenger’s last-second alert that, oh, by the way, i smell shadow-aspected aether, you got played after all.

After that, it had been all he could do to try and put as much of himself between his teammates and the screaming metal as he could. It was a wry quirk of fate, thinking about it, that he kept pushing his familiarity with weightless vertigo to his advantage whenever Loki let her mask drop. This was the second—third, if you liberally counted the battle against the Behemoth.

And now here they were: Stranded inside the walls of the zombie-infested city, their way in strewn hallway across the rooftop and gardens of a Skaeler manor, and their chaperones in nearly as many pieces as the ride. A grisly sight by any measure. Rudolf let a moment pass, full of wondering when exactly he had become so cold blooded about seeing people, real living people, be reduced to scraps of meat…

And then he returned to searching through the wreckage, turning aside rent steel and stomping out tongues of orange flame, the long shadows of dusk seeming a thirsty pool around him.

“That’s all the more reason to get everyone still breathing stable, and everyone still stable moving.” He huffed, pulling a groaning raider free. Zeke was hardly wrong—a cataclysmic wreck like this and fresh blood on the wind were sure to draw the attention of everything in the city.

He could hear his father’s voice echoing in his head, cutting through the swirl of smoke and confusion in his head, carefully cordoning off the part of him that wanted to panic and lose nerve before smashing like a mace into the mire with characteristically heartless advice: Those who can follow you out will. Those who can’t will not slow you.

He bit back at the unwanted counsel.

“Now if you can complain, you can help us get out of here quicker.” he grunted stiffly, reaching for his absorption materia. The flow of vitality was itself an expression of aether, at some level— that it could be manipulated to sap strength from one to bolster another, in theory, was a two-way street. And he had by far the most strength here to give, by any reasonable reckoning— but he couldn’t overextend himself, lest he end up trapped beneath the weight of his harness. ”Or do you not share your sister’s gift for both the major schools of magic? If so, help Chisato with triage— we’ll get who we can on their feet as we get them out of the mess. I’m sure there’s already somewhere we’re to be heading between the other two.”

Her home. Please be her home. If anything had to come of this horrible mess they were once again stranded in… please let it be closure, if not a reunion.

"Ah, forgive me, I didn't realise any of our surviving Skaelans had any idea about the current state of the city. By all means, if you want to fully trust their memories as more than a map, be my guest," despite the airy tone, the sarcasm couldn't have been any thicker.

Zeke stretched, producing a familiar-looking knife and spinning it around his fingers, "You shouldn't compare my skills with little Miina's. We haven't met in years and I barely knew the basics myself…"

Then some of the tension was gone, that easy smile in place instead, "But lucky for you, this was too important not to pick up. Cura."

---

"City can't have changed too much." Esben pulled off his cloak, shaking it to get some of the dust from the landing back off. "Damaged, maybe, but they can't have up and rearranged every district, every street, every building. Especially not with unintelligent undead. We can still find our way around. And about the fairies—they can't get that far away from me. Eos, Selene, if you would please..."

At the sound of their names, the fairies popped in as aether coalesced into their forms, Selene shaking her head with her hands on her hips while Eos shot Esben a withering glare after catching sight of just what had happened. "Stabilize whoever of them you can, anybody that's worse off than Zeke here can help."

"Zeke? Isn't that..." Eos peered at the red-headed Mystrel. Selene looked over as well, and finished her sister's sentence: "Miina? No, too tall, and that coat isn't right." Eos looked him over a little more closely, before nodding. "Yeah, and he's actually got something to sh—"

"Now."

At Esben's insistent command, they quickly got to work, Selene doing triage while Eos supplied the actual healing magic to those that could stand to take it. He sighed, looking back at the wreck of the airship. There was no real point to guessing whose fault it was that they'd crashed, of course. Annoying as it was, though, he couldn't deny some small satisfaction at having his misgivings from the moment they'd met the raiding party actually justified. "Well. Must have gone to our pilot when I wasn't looking and overruled me, eh? I was just on my way to go and tell them to turn back when the engines gave out."

Éliane, unsurprisingly, had landed on her feet. Without putting a hole through a roof this time, though if any of them were about to start hopping across Solitude's rooftops to get around quickly and keep an eye out on any undead nearing their party, that might change rapidly. Peering at the now-ruined manor they'd landed within, he was fairly certain they weren't terribly far from his old apartment anyways...

"Your house should be secure, ja? Given how long he served, I can't imagine Oliver would be unprepared for anything that might need him to bunker down."

The blurring world around me necessitates only one thing---To act without thinking. Dying here would have no worth.

I'm only somewhat conscious of what my body is doing as we fall. Twisting, curling, throwing myself down and trying to remain stable as sound fills my ears. It's all I can do, all I can possibly do, to ensure my life is not wasted.

If I'm going to die, it should be for the sake of accomplishing something.

I can feel myself thrown. I can feel the impact. The sound. I tuck by limbs against myself, the sharp impact, the dull throb through my back, and then---

... It's over.

I can stand. That's the first assessment that I make. That's all I need to know. While something throbs in my lower back, it's clearly not enough to inhibit my movement. As long as I can move, then everything should be fine.

Before anything else, there's something far more important that I must do.

"Can everyone move?"

Since I can move, it's more important to assess the conditions of the others. Many of the others onboard the ship did not make it....

But for them, there is little that I can do. Rather, I must focus on the other Kirins.

If conditions had been somewhat better, I would have immediately departed to attempt to locate the saboteur and kill them immediately, but that does not appear to be an option.

---

Although she had made it look effortless, somehow Éliane managed to land on her feet amidst the rooftop wreckage. Perhaps a small mercy, but the fact that the ship had crashed to begin with was not—she had very specifically wanted to peek over the walls, not bloody fly over them. It became very quickly obvious that a certain traitor was involved once again, making the pink-haired officer grit her teeth in frustration as she assessed the damage to the ship and their party. The Kirins, as experienced as they were knew how to or had the means to land well… regular Skaelan infantry, not so much. Now that they were in Solitude –she thought she would never have to think this—they were in deep trouble. Especially with injured fellow countrymen and servicemen at that. Looking around, she quickly got her bearings as to where they were in the city.

Éliane checked her pockets, making sure her now very important wind materia were intact, which they were.

The solution to her was obvious, and given that they all knew her background, the others, too. She said it anyway. “Whatever we do now, keep to the roofs as much as we can. Unless there are intelligent, jumping zombies, that’s the safest option we have.” Éliane bobbed her head in agreement with Esben. “Yes. We should head to my family’s bakery. Ever since the crop riots 22 years ago, papa’s always had a mind for being prepared for another riot. Zombies aren’t the same, but it’s close enough, and if we’re lucky my friends from the 1st might be holed up there too. And we can jump to it.”

Scanning the rooftops and the path ahead of them, she couldn’t help but to frown. “It’s not going to be an easy trip from here, though. We’re in Whitewater Gardens, a neighborhood that’s kind of shite for roof jumping in some parts, and we need to get to the Laruelle Bakery in Renelle, which is down that way from here,” she pointed, gesturing down towards a part of the skyline away from the walls. “Still have to try though, because I’m not leaving without giving it a good go.”

The path across the roofs was as difficult as Elly made it out to be, especially with wounded in tow. Trekking across the rooftops in this state was slow going, but it did allow the party to finally see the truth of Zeke's words: Walking cadavers, still clad in the clothes they'd perished in, shambled through the streets.

By all appearances, it seemed that both direct line of sight and loud noises alerted the undead, who sped up to a lumbering jog whenever they were startled. Whatever they slew didn't rise again, and they fed upon dead flesh that wasn't their own, as if they knew that meat of their own kind wasn't good. Nevertheless, the sheer number of revenants roaming the streets suggested a near-total disaster for Solitude as a city. While it clearly wasn't every single soul that was turned, a generous estimate suggested that one in ten may have survived whatever it was that zombified the city to begin with.

On the borderline that separated Whitewater Gardens from Renelle, the party and hangers-on came across their first hiccup: there was no viable way to cross districts without descending to street level. A major thoroughfare, wide enough for vehicles three lanes deep on both sides, separated them from Elly's home district. And it went without saying that the undead infested the crossing, shambling around and over wrecked automobiles. All in all, a small horde of nearly a hundred could be seen in the immediate vicinity. Once the party descended from the rooftops, they would have but moments before they would be swarmed.

"Well, we got this far, but sneaking across is out," the mage stated, as altogether obvious as it was. He was probably looking at Rudolf, but it was hard to say – after the surviving soldiers had proved capable of at least making it this far along the rooftops, the glare was gone and it was getting harder to get a read on him. That, and it was hard to tell where he was looking when his eyes seemed to always by shut.

"If it's a matter of fighting across, getting a bit scratched is fine…" That at least was more useful, "Well, as much as any scratch is. Hasn't seemed contagious~"

"But I was more interested in getting out than working out where they came from. If anyone starts dying, maybe it's best to just leave them."

---

"We really should invest in more elevated walkways," Esben mused, looking over the thoroughfare below. "I guess we just got too used to cars too quickly...Wish we'd landed on the other side of the city, there's a hospital there that straddles the road and we'd be able to just stroll across." A hospital, of course, would only be worse than a dedicated morgue or dropping into the city catacombs during a massive undead outbreak like this, but if they weren't going in...

Definitely a shame they crashed where they did. That left them with the conundrum of how to pass nearly a hundred of the zombies without getting torn to shreds. The few wounded soldiers they were able to salvage wouldn't be of much use, and most of them didn't really have crowd control so much as they were very good at taking out single targets. Aside from, of course, Rudolf's borrowed sword, and the fact that he had the training to use it. Not that zombies would be deterred from approach by a man swinging a big sword, unless they had some level of intelligence left.

Rudolf alone, though, was more of a risk than he was willing to take. If anything were to go wrong, they'd basically be sacrificing him to buy themselves some time. Selene could speed him up, maybe he could even loan out his new materia to give the man more to work with like when they'd first fought Leviathan...But he'd still prefer to even up the odds. "We shouldn't have to cross anything like this again, at least," he mumbled, half thinking out loud. "And we're not lacking for explosives, right? Éliane, Chisato, you two still have more than enough?"

There was a clear enough path where the automobile wreckage wouldn't get in their way, and he pointed at it for the rest to see. Of course, there were plenty of the undead milling about through there thanks to the same lack of wreckage, but with what he had in mind, that shouldn't be a problem. "We've all got good arms. Throw bombs through there to clear out the path, and the explosion should stun the rest of the undead long enough for us to make some good progress. Rudolf can go just ahead and clear out the rest of the way—Rudolf, if you think you need it, I'll let you borrow the materia that Halvor gave me too, just no breaking it—and I'll take the rear. Selene and Eos can help us all move a bit quicker and give us a bit more of a buffer. The rest of you pick off any of them that get too close to our sides. Everybody keeps tight in together aside from Rudolf. How's that sound?"

"Oh good," Rudolf dryly remarked from the rear of the group before stalking forward, gaze pinned on the field of undead below. "I've always wanted a chance to say 'I'll deal with the rabble, you guys make a break for it'. Get to cross that off the bucket list after all."¹

The zombies below shambled aimlessly through the street below, seeming to drift, however vaguely, towards the echoed sounds of their rag-tag incursion force hopping from building to building. That they congregated in this wide passage below seemed just as much coincidence as it did pursuit— but all the same, it'd take legs like Galahad's to bound the gap that lay ahead without falling to the pavement and into the lot of them. Rudolf had stronger legs than anyone here, but not nearly to that degree— saying nothing of the wounded they had in tow. His eyes darted from head to head as they swayed along, piling each of the walking corpses up in a soaring tally. By his count, well past four score of them, at least. Probably safe to round it off to a hundred.

Those were daunting numbers to throw yourself at, even against normal soldiery; for all that undead proved to lack compared to the guile and rational minds of the living, they traded it for no sense of fear or survival, merely bestial hunger for flesh. No doubt they'd swarm and try to crack him and his armor open like a summer crab. Long odds in either scenario... but not impossible.

Garland could do it. Limbtaker Izayoi could do it. You're pretty sure your brother, provided this many additional warm bodies, could do it as well. Very reasonable standards.

He freed Anders' greatsword from his back, rolling his shoulder and testing the weight, growing so familiar so soon as it was. They wouldn't heed the arc of death it would carve through the space around him, throwing themselves at wherever he landed by the dozen. If he was diligent, stayed mobile, and liberally applied the islands of terrain the upturned car wrecks provided, he could see those staggering lumbers they mustered for prey being turned into a merry chase around the field, herding handfuls at a time into the path of his blade before bounding again. His harness would insulate him from incidental scratches and bites, his knife could punch through those that got too close²... taxing physically, even moreso mentally, but he saw the path through the situation in front of him.

"I still have Quake and the blackflame, too, if things get a little more hairy than we bargain for. I'll be fine," he affirmed, slipping the Time materia³ into his pouch with a nonetheless. The problem, as one might expect, was the situation behind. With the extra parameters they had to deal with, Rudolf knew very well that it forced 'waiting around for him to whittle the whole mass down' wasn't as viable as it would be on his own. Twice the issue in enemy territory, Three times as bad when you considered how much noise the protracted combat would make to attract more undead than he could keep up with. Compared to re-slaughtering half of Solitude? Blasting through naturally won out. "Just focus on getting everybody across in one piece. I'll be three seconds ahead—"

He raised a hand palm-down and then wiggled it. Time Materia, after all.

"—Give or take."

He then crouched as that hand fell to the stark white bone of his dagger's hilt, drinking in the soft blues of moonrise. Deep breath, deep focus. Once everyone was on board, the bombs would fly— and then so would he, into the wake of the smoke.

---

---

• _{1. Long time listener, short time caller here: You have literally never mentioned a bucket list before now. This is news to me.}
• _{2. Obviously, stab wounds don't mean much when you stop needing your organs to animate you. It'll provide a handhold to muscle an intrepid cadaver around, like a meat shield.}
• _{3. Remember, "Honor is the refuge of the strong" extends to agreements, too. Scam your friends. Take their valuables. After all, they gave them to you. This materia's never leaving our pocket again, I do not care that you kind of don't believe you need it. I want it.}

---

Éliane had expected the thoroughfare, but she had hoped that the street wasn’t going to be as problematic as she thought it was. Unfortunately, it was worse. Having made it this far with the team and her injured infantryman, there was a grim look on her face as she took in more and more of her hometown and the macabre fate that had befallen it. There were too many dead, and she knew that it would cripple Skael for years to come.

She helped steady one of the men after a wobbly landing, shaking those thoughts from her head as she focused on the road ahead of them. The amount of walking dead was staggering. “Too bad we don’t have a working bus,” she mused, thinking of how a high powered battering ram might have cut through the dead.

At Esben’s comment, she checked her own explosives pouch. “I’m worried the noise will just attract more of them, but I have enough. We’ll just have to go fast.” Éliane gave Rudolf a thumbs up of encouragement, the morale just as much for herself as for him, but she pulled out several grenades, calculating the worst damage she could do in the crowd of undead.

“On my mark, then. As Esben –Mr. Matthiassen—said, stick together, don’t stray, because we’re not going to be able to get you out with so many here.”

Waiting several beats, she tossed her grenades to their designated spots, landing amongst the shambling dead. What followed was a quartet of muffled booms of fragmentary explosions and black smoke, prompting Éliane to give the go ahead. “Go, go! I’ll keep the bombs going!”

At the very least, everyone who is a part of the Kirins is alive and able to move. That is what is most important, for the sake of completing our mission.

For the moment, that matter is no longer of chief concern. As long as everyone can move, then we must proceed as quickly as possible.

That is where the next challenge lays.

I have never seen a sight of this nature before. The animated corpses of the once-living, moving in a massive swarm. Why? How? For what purpose? How did such a thing occur here? While I certainly believe that Valheim's dogs would be willing to use the bodies of the dead in such a fashion, I do not think they had the capability to do so.

What could possibly have happened?

---It's disgusting.

But I cannot allow myself to linger on such thoughts. For now, I must locate the ideal spot.

Preferably, one where an explosion would destroy or incapacitate as many walking corpses as possible, while also helping to clear our path forward. Nodding towards Mathiassen-san, I reach into my bag and produce the black sphere that is one of my explosives.

This situation is beyond abominable, but I will not let it shake me from performing as effectively as possible. And so, my eyes scan the shambling fingers to find the ideal point to cause maximum disruption and damage.

Explosions rocked the hundred-strong horde crowding the intersection. With the Kirins' bombs and grenades properly separated, the detonations ripped through the zombies, flaying skin and shredding muscle down to the bone. Rudolf's charged followed. While it wasn't clear if the undead could feel pain, their senses could still be addled. With the amount of noise and smoke kicked up, Rudolf found easy targets in the first few moments, his borrowed greatsword easily carving through rotting flesh and bone.

The strength of the reanimated lied in raw numbers, and the Kirins were doing everything they could to mitigate that advantage. With a path torn open by the explosives and continuously expanded by Rudolf, there was a brief window of opportunity to try and make the crossing. For their part, the wounded tried to make themselves as less of a burden as possible, knowing there was only one chance to make it across the road. Those able to move tried their best to keep up, and those unable to assisted in other ways, drawing pistols while they were being led and providing covering fire.

Three-quarters of the way across, the horde was thinning, even if those revenants behind them were beginning to regain their wits. But it seemed as if they were going to make it through. And then a dark, mocking cackle rose from the direction of Whitewater Gardens, where they had just been:

"What's this? It seems the little rats I've been searching for have been scurrying about!" To every Kirin, the voice was unmistakable: it was the demon they had fought in the ruins of Lunaris. Ferdiad. The abyssal jongleur seemed to manifest out of the shadows atop a roof from Whitewater Gardens' direction, staring straight at the thoroughfare with a demented grin and scythe in hand.

"Run, rodents, run! In the interest of fair play, I'll even give you a head start! The game will begin once you've crossed into the next district. Can you evade me? And for how long? Dohohohohohoho~!"

Tearing through the smoke and dust had come all too naturally to the black-clad swordsman, the broad hews of his blade trailing arcs of silver moonlight and spraying blooms of inky, dead blood. He was a wedge at the foot of the door the hail of explosives had opened, finding the right pace to keep forcing their little bubble of safety within the throng forth without leaving their most infirm, under the watchful care of the other three, behind. They were going to make it, they could maintain this pace for the last few me—

Oh Mother—
—Fucker, are you serious.

"You'll want this back, Esben!" Rudolf roared as he finally smashed through the far boundary of infected and about-faced, digging through his pouch for the Time Materia and flinging it home once he made eye contact with the SEED, a litany of growled swears passing beneath his breath as he pounced again, this time to jam his foot in the door. His mind raced. Ferdiad.

Ferdiad. That demon wasn't bound to the ruins in any respect after all— in hindsight, it made sense that the erstwhile impossibility that was the jongleur's corporeal form let him range that far from Lunaris¹, a realization that did little to assuage the dismay it came on the heels of. He wrenched his sword around to cut off the advance of another trio of zombies as the rest of the group hurried along, the crash of steel through flesh and bone punctuating sharply barked orders, each one familiar to those that had been on the other side of the border two weeks past.

Oh, I get it.

"We're going to have to stick to light the rest of the way through!" Him most of all— presuming they were still hoping they could avoid giving the game away. Blackflame as a last resort— and a total moratorium on shadowstepping after all. For all that he was making good progress at picking it up, with the demon in the picture swimming through the same pools of darkness, it'd be akin to going overboard with a shark tailing your ship. Rudolf had hoped to bank on the technique as a utility to navigate tight spots, repositioning himself out of a jam— he didn't fancy his chances of meeting Ferdiad in his own domain. "He can walk through shadows damn near the same as we've been going roof-to-roof; everyone stay tight once we're topside!"

He could feel the scowl spreading across his face as his strokes grew more desperate, harried less by the undead and more by the mounting tempest at the back of his thoughts. He tried all he could to keep paring the situation down, focusing on bare essentials lest he begin to spiral off into a mild panic— dots threatened to connect in his head that he was really, really hoping were off-base. No doubt, if they found safe enough harbor to go slack a little, he'd have to confront them head-on. He couldn't stop himself forever— he needed to settle for stopping himself for these crucial minutes that came next.

Honestly, I just noticed this, but it's a little crazy you haven't with the way you always want to make a big stink about having the "right" answer to everything.

If you mean the fact that his "patron" is probably just the person we were arguing over having shadow magic a minute ago—

A shock of red flitted by, filling the field of his visor for an instant.

No points for "if", little man. Nobody wants a rambling schizophrenic who says, "it depends".

Gods, he wished he could slug this unhelpful piece of shit—²

"Zeke! I don't suppose you've run into Dispelja, have you? If not... Hell, even if you have— Where's the nearest chapel to where we're headed!? Don't tell me it's on the other end of the border!" he called, switching his attention to the SEEDs at the end of the line and ushering the Mystrel along as they broke through the end of the crossing, the first few raiders in tow. Solitude, and more broadly Skael, were notoriously the most secular of the four nations of Ibros— half the reason certain slices of northern country refused to adopt materia were downwind of the resultant theological dispute. They considered it unholy, unnatural twisting of Etro's divine ordainment of the Aether, little better than Black Mages.³ "I don't even know if corporeal demons would be rebuffed by it, but holy ground's our best chance!"

He wasn't willing to bet that'd do it. Not at this point. Ferdiad had already proven twice over that the Goddess's disdain could only impede him, not outright smite him— crossing great distances from the land he had once been tied to like this, as well as Miina's Dispel in Lunaris not proving enough to finish the job outright. He could feel his backups falling away even as he tried to set his repertoire to work in his mind's eye.

Blackflame was out. Shadowstep was out. Quake he dared not utilize too early, for threat of directly squaring off with their pursuer— his other materia had been sapped once already in helping get their wounded comrades stable enough for the fairies to heal properly. At this rate, swordplay and split-second prescience courtesy of his passenger⁴ were going to be the only things he would have left to leverage. With half their fighting strength, and a handful of wounded or non-combatants to look after, the odds were a whole lot worse than they were in the ruins— even before you factored in that they had no midday sun at their backs.

The din had attracted more undead to the thoroughfare, naturally, and the gaps the Kirins had carved through the street were filling up quick. So many... little wonder the city had seemingly gone totally dark. It had already felt like he'd cut through a hundred, just trying to hold their space open until the last of them were safely across... but in truth, he wasn't keeping track of the smaller details, once Ferdiad had manifested. A chill had begun to settle into his bones, hearing the laugh and seeing the waves of shambling bodies that threw themselves into the whirlwind— in this once-metropolis, now so suddenly dead.

They took to the roofs again, once the last man was across, but try as he might Rudolf could do nothing to shake it. The spike that had built up in the back of his mind, regardless of how much he worked to keep his focus on the task at hand. It was going to run him through the moment he gave it the chance, verdegris that had torn into the sky now turned upon the snow. Horror. A black, moonless horror.

He had heard this story before, he realized— and he worried he might now have found the terrible answer at the end of it.

---

---

• _{1. You know, come to think of it...}
• _{2. You have bigger problems than me. Bigger problems than what I've put together, too.}
• _{3. To be clear: This is not the official position of anyone in this unit. The spy has talked plenty about how he's Ithar's specialest little boy— Rudolf actually seethes a little at having it rubbed in his face. We just engage in "rhetorical framing", the same way I "rhetorically frame" mystrel as "recently uplifted", and Valon "rhetorically frames" Ospreyans as "incapable of differentiating between 'l' and 'r'."}
• _{4. Wasn't I "unhelpful" just a moment ago? Should I maybe remind you that there's much more precedent for "ungrateful", in this arrangement? That I'm a magnanimous patron? Funny we mention that word— and just to drive the point home, I'll tell you for free that if Dispel worked on contact, Absorption will too. Try and throttle him if you go for it.}

---

"We're really dealing with this cretin again? And didn't he say we were better than vermin last time?" Esben muttered as he continued to run across the way, ushering the others up and taking to the roofs again with Rudolf. Eos hovered next to him, shoving the materia she'd caught when Rudolf tossed it back into the pocket he'd pulled it from. "Keep behind Elly, she'll know where any chapel is in this district. Let's not let him follow us to her home, ja?"

That still left them with precious few options to deal with Ferdiad chasing them, and without half of their team he didn't really feel like engaging in a pitched fight with the demonic jester. A quick hand to Cid's crystal confirmed that it was as inert as could be, too far from any holy grounds to try and call him in or even try to blind Ferdiad with its light. "Eos, Selene—You mentioned summoning in someone else you know, other than the eidolons. She an option right now?"

"No!"

"It would take too long to teach you for this, if she'd even listen yet..."

Focused as he was on roof-hopping, he didn't really have a chance to sigh. "Alright, then, another tactic." He raised his voice, calling out at the jester: "Is this just for fun, or did your patron put you up to this, Ferdiad? What's the chance that we could try and talk this out instead of playing these games?"

Audacious, more than a little ridiculous, but sometimes that worked. "I'd really prefer to enjoy a show than be part of it, if they're willing to talk to one of us!"

The redhead slipped up onto the roofs as easily as any of the rest of them, not seeming to have done much on the path this far – yet still that knife was slick with something that might have been blood at some point, and the mystral gave Rudolf an exasperated look. "Of course I know Dispel, that's too useful – but not for this."

A minute twitch to indicate the strange jester thing that he had no idea about, and was only marginally more equipped to deal with than any of the common soldiers.

"Sanctuary… if it's not been overrun and defiled by now, we'd need to take a detour south."