Then everything exploded.
So. Many months ago, thebaconfat wrote this, and I said this. Then nothing happened for like forever, and then I actually wrote something.
It being me, the thing ballooned into a 40-chapter epic rewrite of the whole game, so I'll probably need to write an abridged version of the whole thing. (40 chapters has kind of a symbolic status for me, as it's the length of the one giant fic that I've actually finished. Which was technically 39 plus some author's notes that Fanfiction.net eventually made me take down. Anyway.) I've promised myself I wouldn't saddle myself with another huge fic I won't finish, so I'm also planning to finish Moonlight in the near future and work on Sidelines and this concurrently, and I'm announcing this to the Internet so I'll actually do it for fear of looking bad.
Incidentally, I may be the only person who can write a Fang/Lightning fic with a 3,000-word first chapter that features neither Fang nor Lightning. To compensate that, I made a cover. Icon. Thing.
See? They're on the cover! The fic's totally about them, eventually!
The fic is called Covenant, which seemed like a meaningful name when I came up with it last week.
PHASE 1
- Divergence -
--
The thirteenth day was when everything changed.
At first, I thought we were going to be fine. Things looked a bit rough, but I told myself we’d come through worse. If anything, I was surprised at how easy it all seemed.
By the time I’d worked out how big a fool I was, and how much trouble we were in, things had already gone too far.
--
The trains met at the rim of the Hanging Edge, in the ruins of a broken city. It had been a proper station once, centuries ago, serving a metropolis whose name had retreated into the history texts. Now it was a mass of dusty arches, covered in dirt and debris from the artificial ceiling that loomed high above. On one side loomed the ruins, buildings suspended in air by trusses and ancient skyways, lights still glowing although no one called them home. On the other, far below, rippled the waters of Lake Bresha, reaching out to the edge of the world.
The troops had formed ranks, helmeted eyes glowing in the shadow and laser sights crisscrossing the scene as they ushered the refugees into place. They lined up on tracks that led out over the lake and then just stopped, broken by the cataclysm that had ruined this place. Now a portal stood at the end of each track, waiting to complete their journey.
Serah filed out with the others, clad in the same prisoner’s robes as the girl in front of her and the man behind. The headpiece weighed on her, the thick robes chafed against her arms, and the magnetized shackles held her wrists together at an unnatural angle. But she didn’t mind. It was almost over now.
They formed two lines, with soldiers on either side of them holding guns at the ready. Then, all of a sudden, the crowd was awash in light. Serah looked up and saw a massive skytank hovering over them, floodlights blazing down. A second tank was off to her left, illuminating another rail track with refugees lined along it. Two more hovered off to her right, over more refugees, and others were descending into place. The scale of what was about to happen, and the sheer number of people caught up in it, struck her for the first time.
“May I have your attention,” came a voice from the skytank’s loudspeaker. It was a man who didn’t need to bother introducing himself - the Primarch, whose worship-day addresses made his voice a weekly feature in every home, even if nobody could ever recall a word he said. “On behalf of Cocoon’s citizens, I would like to thank our brave Pulse pioneers, and express our best wishes for a successful relocation. Your noble and selfless sacrifice ensures the continued safety and peace of our society.”
A murmur ran through the refugees. “As if he gave us a choice,” muttered the man behind Serah.
“Were it not for this remarkable gesture,” the radio continued, “every resident of Cocoon would be exposed to the dangers of the world below. By choosing to leave Cocoon, and participating in this migration, each one of you has done your part to ensure a safe and prosperous future. I am humbled by your sacrifice. You have the thanks of a grateful populace, and our sincere wish that you will find fortune in your new home.”
Another floodlight snapped on, illuminating the portal at the end of the line. The structure, three modular antennae arranged in a triangular pattern, began slowly to rotate, rising into the air.
“Start walking!” commanded a soldier from the side of the tracks, motioning unnecessarily with his rifle. “Steady! No sudden moves!”
Serah obeyed, almost stepping into the refugee in front of her who wasn’t quite as eager. She knew she ought to be terrified at the thought of what waited on the other side of the portal, but in a way she felt almost excited at the possibility.
She glanced at the girl beside her, caught a shock of red hair underneath the hood. “Hey,” she said, smiling and trying to mean it. “Are you scared?”
The other girl smiled back, and Serah caught something in her eye. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “Like the man said: New home!”
It was a long walk; the soldiers didn’t seem to want to get near the portal themselves, and were making them cross more than a quarter mile of increasingly rickety track. Serah could feel the structure swaying slightly under her feet, and could only be thankful that there didn’t seem to be much wind. Unbidden, another thought came to her - the Hanging Edge felt almost like a tomb, with the refugees on their way to be buried.
A rumbling sound above her made Serah look up, in time to see a jagged set of lines appear in the ceiling. The lines widened, light pouring through, to reveal a layer cake of structures built above the massive trap doors. Descending through them was a towering object that it took her a moment to recognize.
She’d grown up with the Pulse Vestige dominating the beach outside her town, but seeing it floating across the scenery, suspended from a Sanctum airship, was something else entirely. Indigo lights played over its surface, and purple beams shot out in random directions, the colors combining with the airship’s golden energy tethers to give the structure a kind of alien majesty, something between a giant sarcophagus and a shrine.
“Keep moving!” the soldier admonished. With another flash of light, the portal energized in front of them. The three segments separated, and a deep purple vortex appeared between them. The refugees at the front of the line hesitated before it, as the light rippled over them.
“Proceed into the portal,” commanded a voice from the skytank, echoing off the ruins behind them. “Do not cause any delay. Move-”
Then the skytank exploded.
Serah fell to her knees, raising her arms as a wave of heat washed over her from the blast. When she looked up, she saw that the tank hadn’t completely exploded, but one of its engines was burning and the vehicle was falling down toward the lake. The others were pulling up and away, their floodlights now darting frantically across the landscape.
A trio of velocycles screamed through the air, and a rain of gunfire struck between the line of soldiers and the refugees. Both groups erupted in their own chorus of exclamations, the refugees starting in confusion and then cowering onto the pavement, the soldiers casting about before aiming their guns after the attackers. Red laser beams crisscrossed the air, and soon they were surrounded by gunfire.
“Run!” someone shouted, and then the line of refugees had reversed itself, lurching back towards the train. Serah didn’t follow them so much as she was pushed along, lest she be caught and trampled underfoot.
“Maintain position!” demanded one of the soldiers from somewhere behind them. “Proceed through the portal or you will be-” A huge blast landed somewhere behind Serah, and the whole track swayed. The refugees uniformly ignored the command.
The soldiers back at the ruined station had scattered, abandoning the platform by the train in search of better cover. As the refugees gathered there, one of the velocycles swooped in to join them. One passenger had hopped off before it even stopped moving, a huge man clad in a grey trenchcoat with a black bandanna mostly securing his wild blond hair.
She should have known.
“Everyone all right?” he called. “Don’t worry, no one’s going to Pulse today!”
“Snow!” Serah called, pushing her way through the crowd towards him.
“Hey!” As soon as he saw her, Snow barreled through the other refugees and practically smothered her in a giant hug. “What did I tell you, huh? Nobody purges my fiancée without a fight!”
“Found one!” Serah recognized the voice of Snow’s friend Lebreau, but couldn’t see a thing between her hood and Snow’s chest. A second later, the shackles around her wrists gave way. Snow released her, too, allowing her to throw off the cloak, sighing as she felt the cool air and its weight off her shoulders. She saw Lebreau tossing aside a control device like the one she’d seen the train guards carrying, and shouted a thanks, but the other girl was already running off.
The fighting had only gotten worse. Muzzle flashes from rifle fire were now coming from every structure within her view, including Lebreau and some of the other refugees who had picked up discarded soldiers’ guns. More velocycles had swooped in to duel with the tanks, and Sanctum skyfighters were now screaming through the air. The portal at the end of the line had shut down.
“How did you do all this?” she asked, turning back to Snow.
“Made some new friends,” he said, grinning. “PSICOM made a lot of enemies with this purge; now it’s time to reap what they sowed!”
Serah stepped out toward the edge of the platform, trying to get a better look, and quickly realized why she shouldn’t. A huge flash erupted off to her side, and the whole station shuddered. She jumped back, trying to steady herself, and saw a massive cannon extending from one of the skytanks, aimed at a section of the station that was now engulfed in flames and crumbling away. Then she heard a roar off to her other side, and saw a rocket spearing out from the launcher on Lebreau’s shoulder. It caught the skytank right at the base of the cannon, and the vehicle slowly twisted away.
The whole thing looked surreal, she thought, and had to consciously remind herself not to get swept away gawking. She glanced around, trying to get her bearings this time: The soldiers nearest to them appeared to have been cornered on the dead-end rail line between the terminal and the now-inactive portal, where they were being harried by gunfire from velocycles and Serah’s fellow refugees. The quicker skyfighters were attempting to chase away the cycles, but most of the tanks appeared to be pulling back, regrouping around the Pulse Vestige, which was gliding right past them as if nothing strange had happened.
Seeing the Vestige reminded Serah of something else she couldn’t afford to forget. Noticing the air on her arm and realizing what it meant, she looked down and saw that the bandage she’d been using to cover her upper left arm had been lost somewhere in the commotion, and the black brand it had hidden was exposed for anyone to see. “Oh!” she exclaimed, quickly covering the mark with her hand; fortunately, the other refugees seemed too distracted to have noticed.
“Oh, yeah!” Snow was beside her in a second, producing a mass of red fabric from one of his trenchcoat’s pockets. After a second, she recognized the red half-coat she’d been wearing when they met.
“Thanks,” she said, slipping her arms into the sleeves. “Wow, you thought of everything, didn’t you?”
“That’s right!” Snow pumped his fist, flashing that grid of his. “Your hero saves the day!”
“Not yet, hero!” said Lebreau, running up to toss Snow a rifle. “In case you didn’t notice, but the army’s still out there. And they seem kinda pissed!”
At the end of the line, the portal had reversed itself, producing a new, bright blue vortex. As Serah watched, a huge creature jumped through, wielding a massive sword. The soldiers were beginning to advance back toward the station, and the plinking of gunshots ricocheting off the structure was becoming a much more common sound.
Serah had trouble recalling that she had been solemnly marching toward that portal in an orderly line, only a few minutes earlier. “Snow…” she began, but stopped herself. There wasn’t really time for her doubts at the moment, not now that Snow and his friends had apparently started a full-scale rebellion.
“Don’t worry,” Show said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “We promised, right? We’ll get through this together!”
Serah smiled, and tried to believe it.
“Hey,” called Lebreau, nodding out beyond the station. “Now what are they doing?”
The troops along the railway line had stopped, and were retreating toward the portal, which seemed to have reversed itself again. The skyfighters appeared to have pulled back as well, flying circles around them high near the ceiling of the chasm.
Another velocycle skidded in to the platform depositing three more of Snow’s friends. “Hey!” called Gadot, holding a rifle over his head. “Looks like we made ‘em think twice!”
“Of course!” Snow replied, running forward to meet them. “After all, what’s our motto?”
“The army’s no match for NORA!” the others chorused. That hadn’t been their motto the last time Serah had heard it, but she didn’t pay it much heed. Her eyes were on the Pulse Vestige, now poised near the edge of Lake Bresha and the rim of the world.
“Something’s wrong,” she said.
As she watched, a mass of cables shot from the nearby buildings, spearing the structure; its surface disappeared in a cloud of dust. More and more drove themselves into the thing, too many for Serah to count. Then, the energy tethers that had been suspending the structure snapped off, and the airship started to rise away.
The others were watching, too. “That doesn’t look good,” said Snow.
It took Serah another moment to realize he probably didn’t mean the Vestige. The skytanks were now moving away from it, too, advancing on the station. And their huge main cannons were all extended from their undersides, producing a menacing glow.
“We’d better get out of here!” Snow said, grabbing Serah’s hand and starting down the platform. “Everybody get back!”
They couldn’t get far before the first tank fired.
Serah didn’t see the blast, or even exactly feel it; she saw her feet lifting off the ground, which was splitting apart under her, as dust erupted from the walls and blocks of debris shook loose from the ceiling, and felt Snow’s hand getting ripped out of hers. She landed on her feet but couldn’t stay on them, rolling and jamming her shoulder into a crack that hadn’t been there a second earlier. The first sound that registered to her over the ringing of her ears were screams from the other refugees.
Looking back, she saw that the far edge of the station had simply vanished, as if a building-sized monster had taken a bite out of it. The train’s mangled lead car was hanging off the edge, and the whole vehicle was slowly sliding over. The track was collapsing, too; the soldiers were sprinting toward the portal at the far end, but only a few made it; Serah watched the whole structure tip over and fall out of sight.
She barely had time to get back on her feet before the second blast hit. More dust and debris exploded inward from the side tunnels, and a deep groaning noise came from all around her. She felt herself standing up, and then realized she wasn’t; the whole floor was tipping sideways as the station’s supports collapsed. The floor shuddered, and then she was sliding toward the edge.
Snow shouted her name, and she saw him charging toward her. She reached out, and he caught her, but then he tripped and both of them were falling, two more pieces of debris that slid straight off the ruined lip of the platform and into thin air.
For a second, they just stared at each other. Snow’s eyes had the same look of genuine horror that she’d seen on the day she’d first showed him her brand, when she’d tried to break up with him because she didn’t want it to lead him to harm. What a spectacular failure that plan had been.
Pain flared out from the mark on Serah’s arm, as if someone were shooting a laser through it. She winced, and then caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye. She looked up to see a huge shock wave expanding from the Pulse Vestige, ripping off the cables that had been holding it in midair, casting aside the skytanks like leaves in a storm and knocking every structure within a mile into pieces that rained down towards the lake with them.
Serah barely even felt it.
Even though she and Snow had been falling for what felt like half a minute, the Vestige hit the water first, just at the edge of the lake. It was mesmerizing to watch; its daggerlike base drove into the lake’s surface, sending a huge wave through the water, but it hit at an angle and the whole immense structure began to tip over. A new cloud of debris erupted from its midsection, and the whole thing looked about to snap on the edge of the world.
Just as they were about to reach the water, a second flash erupted from the Vestige, and blue light filled Serah’s vision. She couldn’t see, but heard a rending sound louder and deeper than anything she knew how to describe.
When her eyes adjusted, a long moment later, they still hadn’t hit the water. Indeed, when she looked down, she saw they weren’t even falling toward it anymore: The surface had stopped, bare meters away, roiling in a way she couldn’t understand.
It took another second to realize that was because the water was falling too. Beyond the rim of the lake, she could see a cloudless, featureless sky that seemed to stretch on forever, an expanse of green that never curved up but simply stopped at some point incomprehensibly far away, and a huge circle of light so bright that she couldn’t look directly at it.
Then she looked up, past the falling skytanks and fragments of buildings and countless people, toward the waterfall pouring down from the world’s fresh wound, and saw Cocoon receding into the distance above them.
It being me, the thing ballooned into a 40-chapter epic rewrite of the whole game, so I'll probably need to write an abridged version of the whole thing. (40 chapters has kind of a symbolic status for me, as it's the length of the one giant fic that I've actually finished. Which was technically 39 plus some author's notes that Fanfiction.net eventually made me take down. Anyway.) I've promised myself I wouldn't saddle myself with another huge fic I won't finish, so I'm also planning to finish Moonlight in the near future and work on Sidelines and this concurrently, and I'm announcing this to the Internet so I'll actually do it for fear of looking bad.
Incidentally, I may be the only person who can write a Fang/Lightning fic with a 3,000-word first chapter that features neither Fang nor Lightning. To compensate that, I made a cover. Icon. Thing.
See? They're on the cover! The fic's totally about them, eventually!
The fic is called Covenant, which seemed like a meaningful name when I came up with it last week.
PHASE 1
- Divergence -
--
The thirteenth day was when everything changed.
At first, I thought we were going to be fine. Things looked a bit rough, but I told myself we’d come through worse. If anything, I was surprised at how easy it all seemed.
By the time I’d worked out how big a fool I was, and how much trouble we were in, things had already gone too far.
--
The trains met at the rim of the Hanging Edge, in the ruins of a broken city. It had been a proper station once, centuries ago, serving a metropolis whose name had retreated into the history texts. Now it was a mass of dusty arches, covered in dirt and debris from the artificial ceiling that loomed high above. On one side loomed the ruins, buildings suspended in air by trusses and ancient skyways, lights still glowing although no one called them home. On the other, far below, rippled the waters of Lake Bresha, reaching out to the edge of the world.
The troops had formed ranks, helmeted eyes glowing in the shadow and laser sights crisscrossing the scene as they ushered the refugees into place. They lined up on tracks that led out over the lake and then just stopped, broken by the cataclysm that had ruined this place. Now a portal stood at the end of each track, waiting to complete their journey.
Serah filed out with the others, clad in the same prisoner’s robes as the girl in front of her and the man behind. The headpiece weighed on her, the thick robes chafed against her arms, and the magnetized shackles held her wrists together at an unnatural angle. But she didn’t mind. It was almost over now.
They formed two lines, with soldiers on either side of them holding guns at the ready. Then, all of a sudden, the crowd was awash in light. Serah looked up and saw a massive skytank hovering over them, floodlights blazing down. A second tank was off to her left, illuminating another rail track with refugees lined along it. Two more hovered off to her right, over more refugees, and others were descending into place. The scale of what was about to happen, and the sheer number of people caught up in it, struck her for the first time.
“May I have your attention,” came a voice from the skytank’s loudspeaker. It was a man who didn’t need to bother introducing himself - the Primarch, whose worship-day addresses made his voice a weekly feature in every home, even if nobody could ever recall a word he said. “On behalf of Cocoon’s citizens, I would like to thank our brave Pulse pioneers, and express our best wishes for a successful relocation. Your noble and selfless sacrifice ensures the continued safety and peace of our society.”
A murmur ran through the refugees. “As if he gave us a choice,” muttered the man behind Serah.
“Were it not for this remarkable gesture,” the radio continued, “every resident of Cocoon would be exposed to the dangers of the world below. By choosing to leave Cocoon, and participating in this migration, each one of you has done your part to ensure a safe and prosperous future. I am humbled by your sacrifice. You have the thanks of a grateful populace, and our sincere wish that you will find fortune in your new home.”
Another floodlight snapped on, illuminating the portal at the end of the line. The structure, three modular antennae arranged in a triangular pattern, began slowly to rotate, rising into the air.
“Start walking!” commanded a soldier from the side of the tracks, motioning unnecessarily with his rifle. “Steady! No sudden moves!”
Serah obeyed, almost stepping into the refugee in front of her who wasn’t quite as eager. She knew she ought to be terrified at the thought of what waited on the other side of the portal, but in a way she felt almost excited at the possibility.
She glanced at the girl beside her, caught a shock of red hair underneath the hood. “Hey,” she said, smiling and trying to mean it. “Are you scared?”
The other girl smiled back, and Serah caught something in her eye. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “Like the man said: New home!”
It was a long walk; the soldiers didn’t seem to want to get near the portal themselves, and were making them cross more than a quarter mile of increasingly rickety track. Serah could feel the structure swaying slightly under her feet, and could only be thankful that there didn’t seem to be much wind. Unbidden, another thought came to her - the Hanging Edge felt almost like a tomb, with the refugees on their way to be buried.
A rumbling sound above her made Serah look up, in time to see a jagged set of lines appear in the ceiling. The lines widened, light pouring through, to reveal a layer cake of structures built above the massive trap doors. Descending through them was a towering object that it took her a moment to recognize.
She’d grown up with the Pulse Vestige dominating the beach outside her town, but seeing it floating across the scenery, suspended from a Sanctum airship, was something else entirely. Indigo lights played over its surface, and purple beams shot out in random directions, the colors combining with the airship’s golden energy tethers to give the structure a kind of alien majesty, something between a giant sarcophagus and a shrine.
“Keep moving!” the soldier admonished. With another flash of light, the portal energized in front of them. The three segments separated, and a deep purple vortex appeared between them. The refugees at the front of the line hesitated before it, as the light rippled over them.
“Proceed into the portal,” commanded a voice from the skytank, echoing off the ruins behind them. “Do not cause any delay. Move-”
Then the skytank exploded.
Serah fell to her knees, raising her arms as a wave of heat washed over her from the blast. When she looked up, she saw that the tank hadn’t completely exploded, but one of its engines was burning and the vehicle was falling down toward the lake. The others were pulling up and away, their floodlights now darting frantically across the landscape.
A trio of velocycles screamed through the air, and a rain of gunfire struck between the line of soldiers and the refugees. Both groups erupted in their own chorus of exclamations, the refugees starting in confusion and then cowering onto the pavement, the soldiers casting about before aiming their guns after the attackers. Red laser beams crisscrossed the air, and soon they were surrounded by gunfire.
“Run!” someone shouted, and then the line of refugees had reversed itself, lurching back towards the train. Serah didn’t follow them so much as she was pushed along, lest she be caught and trampled underfoot.
“Maintain position!” demanded one of the soldiers from somewhere behind them. “Proceed through the portal or you will be-” A huge blast landed somewhere behind Serah, and the whole track swayed. The refugees uniformly ignored the command.
The soldiers back at the ruined station had scattered, abandoning the platform by the train in search of better cover. As the refugees gathered there, one of the velocycles swooped in to join them. One passenger had hopped off before it even stopped moving, a huge man clad in a grey trenchcoat with a black bandanna mostly securing his wild blond hair.
She should have known.
“Everyone all right?” he called. “Don’t worry, no one’s going to Pulse today!”
“Snow!” Serah called, pushing her way through the crowd towards him.
“Hey!” As soon as he saw her, Snow barreled through the other refugees and practically smothered her in a giant hug. “What did I tell you, huh? Nobody purges my fiancée without a fight!”
“Found one!” Serah recognized the voice of Snow’s friend Lebreau, but couldn’t see a thing between her hood and Snow’s chest. A second later, the shackles around her wrists gave way. Snow released her, too, allowing her to throw off the cloak, sighing as she felt the cool air and its weight off her shoulders. She saw Lebreau tossing aside a control device like the one she’d seen the train guards carrying, and shouted a thanks, but the other girl was already running off.
The fighting had only gotten worse. Muzzle flashes from rifle fire were now coming from every structure within her view, including Lebreau and some of the other refugees who had picked up discarded soldiers’ guns. More velocycles had swooped in to duel with the tanks, and Sanctum skyfighters were now screaming through the air. The portal at the end of the line had shut down.
“How did you do all this?” she asked, turning back to Snow.
“Made some new friends,” he said, grinning. “PSICOM made a lot of enemies with this purge; now it’s time to reap what they sowed!”
Serah stepped out toward the edge of the platform, trying to get a better look, and quickly realized why she shouldn’t. A huge flash erupted off to her side, and the whole station shuddered. She jumped back, trying to steady herself, and saw a massive cannon extending from one of the skytanks, aimed at a section of the station that was now engulfed in flames and crumbling away. Then she heard a roar off to her other side, and saw a rocket spearing out from the launcher on Lebreau’s shoulder. It caught the skytank right at the base of the cannon, and the vehicle slowly twisted away.
The whole thing looked surreal, she thought, and had to consciously remind herself not to get swept away gawking. She glanced around, trying to get her bearings this time: The soldiers nearest to them appeared to have been cornered on the dead-end rail line between the terminal and the now-inactive portal, where they were being harried by gunfire from velocycles and Serah’s fellow refugees. The quicker skyfighters were attempting to chase away the cycles, but most of the tanks appeared to be pulling back, regrouping around the Pulse Vestige, which was gliding right past them as if nothing strange had happened.
Seeing the Vestige reminded Serah of something else she couldn’t afford to forget. Noticing the air on her arm and realizing what it meant, she looked down and saw that the bandage she’d been using to cover her upper left arm had been lost somewhere in the commotion, and the black brand it had hidden was exposed for anyone to see. “Oh!” she exclaimed, quickly covering the mark with her hand; fortunately, the other refugees seemed too distracted to have noticed.
“Oh, yeah!” Snow was beside her in a second, producing a mass of red fabric from one of his trenchcoat’s pockets. After a second, she recognized the red half-coat she’d been wearing when they met.
“Thanks,” she said, slipping her arms into the sleeves. “Wow, you thought of everything, didn’t you?”
“That’s right!” Snow pumped his fist, flashing that grid of his. “Your hero saves the day!”
“Not yet, hero!” said Lebreau, running up to toss Snow a rifle. “In case you didn’t notice, but the army’s still out there. And they seem kinda pissed!”
At the end of the line, the portal had reversed itself, producing a new, bright blue vortex. As Serah watched, a huge creature jumped through, wielding a massive sword. The soldiers were beginning to advance back toward the station, and the plinking of gunshots ricocheting off the structure was becoming a much more common sound.
Serah had trouble recalling that she had been solemnly marching toward that portal in an orderly line, only a few minutes earlier. “Snow…” she began, but stopped herself. There wasn’t really time for her doubts at the moment, not now that Snow and his friends had apparently started a full-scale rebellion.
“Don’t worry,” Show said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “We promised, right? We’ll get through this together!”
Serah smiled, and tried to believe it.
“Hey,” called Lebreau, nodding out beyond the station. “Now what are they doing?”
The troops along the railway line had stopped, and were retreating toward the portal, which seemed to have reversed itself again. The skyfighters appeared to have pulled back as well, flying circles around them high near the ceiling of the chasm.
Another velocycle skidded in to the platform depositing three more of Snow’s friends. “Hey!” called Gadot, holding a rifle over his head. “Looks like we made ‘em think twice!”
“Of course!” Snow replied, running forward to meet them. “After all, what’s our motto?”
“The army’s no match for NORA!” the others chorused. That hadn’t been their motto the last time Serah had heard it, but she didn’t pay it much heed. Her eyes were on the Pulse Vestige, now poised near the edge of Lake Bresha and the rim of the world.
“Something’s wrong,” she said.
As she watched, a mass of cables shot from the nearby buildings, spearing the structure; its surface disappeared in a cloud of dust. More and more drove themselves into the thing, too many for Serah to count. Then, the energy tethers that had been suspending the structure snapped off, and the airship started to rise away.
The others were watching, too. “That doesn’t look good,” said Snow.
It took Serah another moment to realize he probably didn’t mean the Vestige. The skytanks were now moving away from it, too, advancing on the station. And their huge main cannons were all extended from their undersides, producing a menacing glow.
“We’d better get out of here!” Snow said, grabbing Serah’s hand and starting down the platform. “Everybody get back!”
They couldn’t get far before the first tank fired.
Serah didn’t see the blast, or even exactly feel it; she saw her feet lifting off the ground, which was splitting apart under her, as dust erupted from the walls and blocks of debris shook loose from the ceiling, and felt Snow’s hand getting ripped out of hers. She landed on her feet but couldn’t stay on them, rolling and jamming her shoulder into a crack that hadn’t been there a second earlier. The first sound that registered to her over the ringing of her ears were screams from the other refugees.
Looking back, she saw that the far edge of the station had simply vanished, as if a building-sized monster had taken a bite out of it. The train’s mangled lead car was hanging off the edge, and the whole vehicle was slowly sliding over. The track was collapsing, too; the soldiers were sprinting toward the portal at the far end, but only a few made it; Serah watched the whole structure tip over and fall out of sight.
She barely had time to get back on her feet before the second blast hit. More dust and debris exploded inward from the side tunnels, and a deep groaning noise came from all around her. She felt herself standing up, and then realized she wasn’t; the whole floor was tipping sideways as the station’s supports collapsed. The floor shuddered, and then she was sliding toward the edge.
Snow shouted her name, and she saw him charging toward her. She reached out, and he caught her, but then he tripped and both of them were falling, two more pieces of debris that slid straight off the ruined lip of the platform and into thin air.
For a second, they just stared at each other. Snow’s eyes had the same look of genuine horror that she’d seen on the day she’d first showed him her brand, when she’d tried to break up with him because she didn’t want it to lead him to harm. What a spectacular failure that plan had been.
Pain flared out from the mark on Serah’s arm, as if someone were shooting a laser through it. She winced, and then caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye. She looked up to see a huge shock wave expanding from the Pulse Vestige, ripping off the cables that had been holding it in midair, casting aside the skytanks like leaves in a storm and knocking every structure within a mile into pieces that rained down towards the lake with them.
Serah barely even felt it.
Even though she and Snow had been falling for what felt like half a minute, the Vestige hit the water first, just at the edge of the lake. It was mesmerizing to watch; its daggerlike base drove into the lake’s surface, sending a huge wave through the water, but it hit at an angle and the whole immense structure began to tip over. A new cloud of debris erupted from its midsection, and the whole thing looked about to snap on the edge of the world.
Just as they were about to reach the water, a second flash erupted from the Vestige, and blue light filled Serah’s vision. She couldn’t see, but heard a rending sound louder and deeper than anything she knew how to describe.
When her eyes adjusted, a long moment later, they still hadn’t hit the water. Indeed, when she looked down, she saw they weren’t even falling toward it anymore: The surface had stopped, bare meters away, roiling in a way she couldn’t understand.
It took another second to realize that was because the water was falling too. Beyond the rim of the lake, she could see a cloudless, featureless sky that seemed to stretch on forever, an expanse of green that never curved up but simply stopped at some point incomprehensibly far away, and a huge circle of light so bright that she couldn’t look directly at it.
Then she looked up, past the falling skytanks and fragments of buildings and countless people, toward the waterfall pouring down from the world’s fresh wound, and saw Cocoon receding into the distance above them.