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Graverobbers

What alarms her isn't the irritation she feels when she can't pierce Serah in good conscious or when every step her leg takes is agony (Chiyoo has slashed out a great chunk of it, and she slaps a bandage over it. Tenebrae feeds her the statistics of scarring, and continues to feed her the statistics in which men and women found scars attractive or not attractive, the latter being more prevalent in most studies).

What alarms her is that she can't see Jack anywhere anymore. She sees soldiers (god there are a lot of soldiers), she sees golden, bleeding scales flooding every corner of the sky, but she can't find Jack. There are cracks in the ground, there's green, gold, glorious colors, but no jack.

Jack is tall, he's a giant. In any crowd he awkwardly looms above the rest. Any party she's ever been to, any meeting of hunters, she can always find Jack. He's a beanstalk. He's a tower so obviously regal that anyone can automatically sense his presence and authority in a room. So where is he?

Goliath

He's weightless. For just a second his body is at the mercy of the thin air above, completely unattached save for the life line that is his grip on his sword. The sky swallows everything until there are only just clouds frozen in a blue landscape. He's not just a giant, he's a giant that's towering over the world itself, he's

slamming against the dragon's body as it turns in the air, scales scraping against his shield like knives, dirt and twigs and rocks and god knew what else dusting his body and pressing into his open wounds, breath knocked out of him as easily as if he had been stepped on. (Does he want it back? The dragon is fetid and foul in stench and he wants to vomit every other second even before realizing how high up they are).

With every portal closed the dragon has grown more and more erratic and agitated until finally, when the insult that was him getting on its back happened, Yinglong took to the air. Jack's barely holding on; his sword is lodged in between its scales and is the only reason he hasn't fallen off, though he's come dangerously close numerous times. Both of them are littered with signs of battle, and now he can't tell if his arm is numb because of the cold air, the lack of blood, the burns, or because it might actually be close to breaking, or if his legs can handle any more snap turns and slams. He scrabbles instinctively to keep ahold but his palms are starting to slick with sweat.

He's flying. <******** ******** ********> It's not even words in his head now, it is the pure sentiment of <********> that's there now, droning on in his dizzied mind like white noise. The dragon gives a deafening roar and he wheezes as he gives a loud panicked laugh in return. There's no vitals to strike back at, the ******** cheater. He's in over his head quite literally.

Yinglong slithers through the air and with an enraged howl it breathes fire over a large swatch of the battlefield, encircling above Chiyoo like a draconic hawk.

Jack hears the announcement just barely over the sound of rushing air: Third portal non-functional. He can't risk reaching up to hit the call button, but he can continue harassing the dragon. With renewed vigor, he quickly pulled out a runic dagger from his belt (the very same one hell kept in his pillowcase) and stabbed upwards to make a new anchor in the dragon's neck. He needs to get to that head, he needs to ******** keep distracting it, he literally can't think of anything else beyond the golden bloodied scales that burn his eyes in the unobstructed sunlight—

Graverobbers

Chiyoo screams an unholy scream, something buried deep within his spirit for the past centuries he's been buried unceremoniously in the ground. A Hollywood-worthy exorcism occurs in front of Chel, a blueish figure holding on to his last shred of life as the barrier rips through Serah's soul and tears them apart.

Serah collapses, but nobody moves. A thick fog has covered the field. The gray walls rise above the field, locking each hunter to a defensive stance. We were so close-

But there's Chiyoo next to her. He's separated them all, and she's within range for a kill. Her daggers are up, and she's limping towards him.

Words curl around her ear and she knows he's up to some kind of trick. It's no longer Serah's voice, it's his own. What stays her hand is that in his Chinese there is a weariness and brokenness that transcends a language barrier. She feels his defeat in every crevice of her bones, the same defeat she feels every night when she's looking up at her ceiling and wondering what she did to deserve such cruelty from her mistakes.

He's reaching for something on the ground and Chel recognizes it as a sword. Her foot clamps down on the blade and he flinches. His expression is manic- survival.

She empathizes with him, but she has a job. Truly if there were another way, she would take it. But this isn't a movie where the villain is trapped, imprisoned or dies offscreen. Chel's job comes with a burden.

The sword begins to glow with hazy yellow ruins, almost orangeish in color; a direct contrast to the blue and grey that surrounds. It's odd that she doesn't find comfort in the cool colors. They make her think of Deus' stone walls. Really neither were very different.

It's very quiet and very sanctimonious. Chel puts her dagger in his chest, under his ribs and lays him down gently. She can feel herself crying, but she's not sure why. This man is evil and she is the hero- this is how it's supposed to be. But Tenebrae reminds her. < Anti-hero. > The body begins to dissipate, tiny blue lights dispersing themselves across the field. What soldiers aren't down are felled by the blue lights.

"Beautiful," Chel whispered, with the same reverence that Jack held for the night sky.

His sword still glows hazy orange under her foot, and she picks it up (better to have a weapon than not). But strangely in her hands it doesn't feel like a weapon. Indeed, the fog splits in whatever direction the blade is being held.

It's then that she remembers she has a radio. "He- He's down. Emil and Aly can you guys see the sword?" Silence as she waits for a response. They don't come in, Chel's worried they were killed in battle.

"Can see."

"Walk towards it I'm there," Chel's voice is shaking because she's never had to take a life so personally before, nor empathized so deeply with her target. But on she leads. "Jordan what's your position?"

"I'm taking care of Serah. Can't see s**t past the fog. You want me to come to the orange light?"

"Nah. Take good care of her."

...

"Jack?"

Goliath

He had been okay, all things considered. Having managed to secure his sword into a crevice of its head, Jack had viciously went for its eyes because they seemed to be as good a target as any in his effort to keep it busy. He even managed to stick his trusty dagger in one eye. The moment the fourth portal was closed, however, it is as if Yinglong's tattered wings have been clipped, and they both spiral out of control.

Jack's radio is gone, has been gone. He becomes aware of it only a split second before the dragon hits the ground with a wounded roar. Teeth smack together, bones are jarred, his brain feels like it belongs on a bobble-head doll, and there is an immeasurable amount of pain radiation from various points on his body. When Yinglong lurches, Jack finds himself incapable of staying on and slides off to the side; there is a dull think as his sword falls with him followed by a not so great sounding crack when he lands on his side.

(But remember, you can't break shoulders, only dislocate them.)

There's a ringing in his ears that's somehow louder than even the defiant roar it makes. He forgets specifically where he is for a moment: what matters is that it's the ground and not the sky or a necrotic mythical creature, and he breathes a shaky sigh of relief. The ground beneath him trembles unnaturally, but then again his surroundings are also blurring together in color and form. Or maybe that's the fog. When did that get there? Hazily he considers it might be miasma like when he had gone to investigate with Abbi and Lex, but it doesn't occur to him to try and cover his mouth. He opens his mouth to try and call someone over, but instead a gasp of pain leaves him: it's not just his shoulder but his whole left arm that's been broken, dislocated, ******** up, however the description went. Great. Army crawl time. Leave a nice bloody trail behind him like some ******** up snail.

But he barely gets started when the earth trembles again, and this time Jack knows it's not just his addled imaginings. It's not the dragon this time: its crash has cracked the ground beneath them and it's beginning to give way. He doesn't think it's possible to feel the adrenaline rush again, but there it is pumping through his aching body like a horn calling him to action: in a constant fight for consciousness, Jack limply inches forward on one shoulder and two legs that feel like jelly if jelly could solidify and bleed. That doesn't sound right. ******** it, keep moving—

But the dragon has other ideas. With Chiyoo gone, it loses whatever sentience it once had and turns berserk. Yinglong's massive body, now barely a skeleton of broken earth, hanging flesh, and bloody scales, thrashes in outrage; it might only have one working eye, but its reach makes up for it. Jack feels claws from one of its many limbs dig into his back and tear him from the ground, tossing him away blindly towards the cliff.

Great time to start being useless, he thinks as he hits the floor a second time and cries out, too dazed to move or understand that his shield has broken and the cliff is beginning to give way.

Graverobbers

There's silence on the other end of the radio and Chel's face contorts something horrible. He's alive, he has to be. His radio was knocked off in the fight. It was melted by some close fire.

She hears him cry out in pain and she tells herself it's just the fog. Chiyoo must still be living on somehow, he's using illusions again, he's making it up. She convinces herself of these things, because if she doesn't she won't find the willpower to take another step.

Emil breaches the fog first and she's stone, she's a rock. "Here. Take the sword. It parts the fog. Get to the portal." Aly comes next, and immediately Chel can tell just how badly the scars and cuts on her body must be because Aly gasps and begins fumbling in her pockets for bandages that aren't there. "S'fine, I still have some," she tells Aly (she ran out a long time ago). "Portal."

The two are gone, the mission is going to finish.

But Chel starts limping towards the sound of Jack's voice. Illusion be damned, she needed to know the source.

The fog is more disorienting without the sword. She walks for some time and feels she's gone nowhere. Every time she looks over her back she can see the orange orb of light in the distance, always in the same position- that alone doesn't move. But neither does it get closer or farther away. She just keeps pushing, because she doesn't know what else to do. She's alone, and not in the physical sense solely. She's alone because she doesn't know whether or not Jack or anyone is alive anymore, and the fog is swallowing up all her tears.

Occidentalis

And now it's become a horrible nightmare because she can't see anything but blue and grey, she hears Jack pleading for her her, and she knows she's failing because her left leg is going numb and she won't be able to walk on it soon.

It seems highly metaphorical in hindsight.

---

Emil comes out of the portal and he lunges for Aly's throat, he's pushing in he's-

crying because of what he's done
releasing his grip immediately
saying the words "occidentalis"

and the strangest thing of all is that Aly forgives him. She wraps her arms around his frail and shaking body, and there's peace.

---

The fog lifts and Chel's miraculously no more than 10 feet from Jack. She looks like a wounded animal ready to devour anything in front of her. She expects to face down a dragon (I can't feel my leg), she expects to see Chiyoo's spirit, somehow resurrected by malice (< I cannot heal your collarbone further, there is a 39.000392% chance that it will fester. >).

Instead she sees Jack clinging to life by the hilt of a sword.

Her daggers fall to the ground immediately and she dives with her hand out. Only one catches him while Jack leans on what little support the sword still has.

She wants to say reassuring things, (it's alright, I gotcha- c'mon, we can do it) but all that comes is a guttural scream because Jack is 6 feet 7 inches of dead weight, and she is broken, beaten and tired. Do something, the wounded animal screams to Tenebrae.

< There is nothing I can do. >

The dirt rubs into the cuts on her chest, but she can't lose Jack. He is all she has left to lose.

But now Jordan's hands join her, and there's at least two women pulling him up. It's still not enough, but it's enough to hold him until Emil and Aly are pulling him up too, and then Jack's somehow gained the power of flight because he's found a way to defy gravity and make it back to the earth, where Chel drags him away from the edge and wraps her arms around him. She's shaking so hard he might as well be able to feel it through his broken bones.

Regroup

Wren has to pry Chel off Jack- it isn't hard necessarily, because when Chel is told "We're going to help him!" by Aly she immediately relents, but she is attached nonetheless.

The aftermath is somewhat sorted. Jack knocks out and the group agrees that no one is strong enough to carry him all the way back to the base camp. Chel tries to stand up, but screams as she puts weight on her leg and the group agrees she needs to sit down. Emil is a shell, something's not right, and the group agrees he needs to stay too. Aly volunteers to guard, because being a sniper she's relatively untouched. Jordan and Wren agree that as leaders they have to be the one to make the trip there and back (which also means they get first dibs of the first aid kits...)

Chel lays down in the dirt next to Jack and Emil, and they all wait in silence. Nobody can draw up the energy to talk. They just wait.

It's over.