Kefka's Tower Ruins

[Adel]

“I tend to agree.” Adel answered snidely as she shoved Kefka in the back, mocking laughter rising from her as he landed. “Hilarious!” She called behind her as she walked ahead, chuckling in contempt all the while. The gall he had to correct her with fictional history. No west or eastern continents? What rubbish. No matter how long she’d been gone, Adel knew for a fact that the geography couldn’t have changed so drastically. All the Quake spells in the world couldn’t move a whole continent.

“Now listen here, clown.” The sorceress said threateningly as she turned on her heel to face her highly unpleasant guide. “You are correct that we are on the southern continent, and that is the extent of your grasp on basic geography. There are three continents in the world. The largest one is to the east, the smallest one is to the south, and the other one is to the west. The closest thing to a northern continent is Balamb Island, and nothing there is even remotely notable.” She chastised, all too eager to put Kefka in his place. It was amazing that the clod seemed to honestly believe she would fall for that tripe. What was he expecting, exactly? That she would believe that her homeland had never existed? That the great Sorceress Adel would accept that her years as ruler were all in her mind? Honestly. The fact that he mentioned he belonged to the Dollet Empire only proved he knew there was such a thing as the western continent.

“Furthermore,” She continued in annoyance. “I don’t know who the Espers are, or what their relation is to your empire. Some empire it turned out to be.” Adel mocked. “Last I checked, Galbadia had taken all but Dollet City itself in the name keeping it secure from my forces. Lot their empire to their own allies. Hah!” Adel scoffed at the irony of it all. In the Dollet Empire’s attempt to fight Esthar and protect their land, their supposed allies the Galbadians had annexed nearly all imperial land. She wouldn’t be surprised if it had simply become known as the continent of Galbadia in her time away.

“Your empire was a thorn in my side for a small time, I admit, but they’d always been slow, hopelessly outmatched, pithy little creatures. By the end, only Galbadia posed any sort of challenge, and we still had them beat at almost every turn.” She gloated, her face beaming with satisfaction for a moment before turning sullen. She’d had Galbadia nearly beaten, but she never thought she’d have to deal with resistance from her own people. They should have said something if they were dissatisfied with her rule. Then she could have killed them.

[Kefka Palazzo]

Kefka stumbled forward with the push, coming to land on his hands and knees in the grass below. He blinked at the ground beneath him with wild eyes; how dare she! He sputtered at she wheeled around him. "I hate you somuch," he mumbled, eyes widening when she spun to address him (in an altogether dissatisfying way, he might add), but narrowing dangerously as she launched into another of her annoying speeches. He hated those speeches, too.

She went on about continents and islands and empires about which Kefka had no idea. He rose to his feet, taking his eyes off her, and leaned down to brush himself off with a disinterested sigh. "You must be from space," he chided as she finished, giggling at the thought. Space! "Otherwise you'd know there was no such thing as Dollet, or Esthar for that matter." He shook his head and began dutifully checking his fingernails, only affording her a stray glance to drive the point home. "There are only two continents, and the Gesthalian Empire presides over all the world. Well, save for a few small kingdoms," he started, grinning widely, "but we've managed to take care of those."

Kefka positively reveled in the look on Adel's face. Confusion had definitely been a part of his new regime. "At least, that's until I destroyed the world and held the remaining populace at my mercy," he laughed, grinning widely at her. "Now, Adel dear, will you get on with it and stop holding us up?" His lip curled in a sneer, Kefka pushed past the sorceress, still sore about the shove she gave him earlier. If she weren't so damn tall...! "We'll never get out of here with your nagging."

[Adel]

At first Adel did not respond to the madman’s rantings. At this point it was clear that Kefka was playing with her, and she wasn’t going to buy into his foolish little game of back and forth. She chose instead to begrudgingly follow Kefka’s suggestion of continuing on with the increasingly intolerable walk. Adel wondered how long he’d had that silly story built up in his head. Had he thought it up on the fly, over the last few hours, or throughout his probable years of isolation in that haphazard tower? Gesthalian Empire indeed.

After some time, however, Adel found she could not bare the silence of the walk. Esthar had always been so full of noise, while the cold of space had left her with an unpleasant opinion of silence. So much so that fighting now seemed preferable to walking with only their steps and the wind to keep her company. “It’s such a shame.” Adel mused sarcastically, breaking the silence that had cursed the last while of their walk. It felt good to hear a voice again, even if it was technically her own.

“If you hadn’t destroyed the world, we could be enjoying a walk in a lush green valley instead of these dead lands.” The sorceress lamented as she gestured to the vegetation around them as though it weren’t really there. “If the world were still around, we might see beautiful mountains a half-day’s walk from here, instead of those sundered husks of rock.” Adel mourned again for the allegedly ruined world, pointing toward the upcoming mountains as if they had crumbled.

“Why, if you hadn’t destroyed the world, we might be on our way to a town right now instead of the imaginary one that never seems to come.” She mocked a third time, this time bringing both his story and his sense of direction into question. She had told herself that she wouldn’t let the little pauper goad her into anger again with his fables, so she chose instead to turn them against him. If Kefka insisted that he was an empire overthrowing magic god who destroyed the world, she would simply have to show him how foolish his story sounded.

Unfortunately, the irony was lost on Adel.

“But you destroyed the world, you fiendish devil. Now you’re perched atop your marvellous tower, looking down at all that once was creation.” She continued as she gestured back in the direction of that giant crumbled Centra ruin he had claimed as his own. How ridiculous to think one man could build something so gigantic. “All fear Kefka Palzano, god of magic and destroyer of worlds, for he has come down from his tower to gaze upon that which he has wrought ruin upon!” Adel further ridiculed, falling to one knee and gesturing dramatically at Kefka with both arms. She gestured upward toward him despite the fact that she was eye-to-eye with the clod while kneeling, signifying that, at least in the scenario she was presenting, Kefka was a much grander figure. “Repent! Repent now, and perhaps he shall spare you his supreme mastery of the basic principals of fire magic!”

As she rose, Adel could no longer hold her façade together as she doubled over in laughter. Kefka the god of magic was respected and feared by all, laughing his annoying laugh as he destroyed the world from his mighty tower. The absurdity of the notion was just too much to bear. Adel might not have been the clown of the two, but she certainly knew a joke when she saw one.

[Kefka Palazzo]

Kefka had just come to contemplating the world's revival and how he would go about undoing it when Adel interrupted the silence yet again. He didn't particularly enjoy silence, but when conversation was centered upon just how much of a failure and a nuisance he was, he would choose silence hands down. Something about her voice and her manner of speaking and... and of being annoyed him. Come to think of it, everything about her made him want to wrap his bony fingers around her neck and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the life out of her. If his hands even fit around her neck, that is; he hoped they did.

He slowed to a crawl as she started on some rhetoric, and if he hadn't known any better he might have thought she was praising him-- but he did know better. For a moment it seemed as if she had truly lost it, gesturing to the trees and mountains and pretending as if they weren't even there. She continued and he got it. He understood that she was mocking him again, and he turned and stared at her dully, heaving a sigh. This again, really? He was hardly surprised and hardly amused. Despite this, Kefka's lip twitched. He wanted to hurt her, to make her shut up and most of all he wanted her to see that he wasn't some clown to be laughed at.

"Palazzo," he corrected, glaring daggers at the sorceress, who was now on her knees (as she should be), making a fool of herself. The nerve she had. He though of how easy it might be just to roast her there... but would one spell take her down, and would she retaliate? Kefka snorted in indignation as Adel doubled over. He stepped forward, perhaps to beat her over the head, but thought better of it; it was too much of a gamble. So he turned his back to her, breathing in deep to quell his anger, if just for a moment. "Are you done?" With that, he began the walk again; he didn't really care if she was ready or not.

[Adel]

Adel didn’t respond, preferring to let her lack of acknowledgement answer for her. Following the jester’s lead, Adel held the smile she’d given herself over the next few hours. It was satisfying to know she’d gotten to him, even if he hadn’t reacted as angrily as she’d hoped. No, there was no fight to break the silence, but there were the memories of the expression on his face, and that would be good enough for a while.

And so those hours passed as the sun rose further. The mountains grew closer and closer as time went on, and soon they found themselves at the base of a small number of mountains. Adel had hoped they were smaller than they looked, but apparently the fates conspired against Adel once more. “Well,” Adel began, stalling for a moment before concluding there was no bright side of having to continuing this trek. “You first.” She finished, gesturing sarcastically to the path between two large mountains. There were sure to be all manner of rock-dwelling creatures ready to pounce on them from the mountain, and even once the mountains had passed there would still be more walking to the town. Or at least she hoped there would be a town.

Bracing herself for more walking, Adel couldn’t help but feel a gnawing in the back of her mind that told here there was nothing waiting for her on the other side. Still, it was better to take her chances with what she didn’t know than to surely die with what she did. Besides, if it came down to that then she could always kill Kefka in a fury.

[Kefka Palazzo]

Standing at the base of a mountain range sure did something to ones resolve; just what that something was, Kefka couldn't quite say, and the valley between them certainly didn't seem any friendlier. He gave Adel a troubled look, though he couldn't be sure why. He knew now, by the sight of the mountains stretching out before them, that they would not reach Miranda by the day's end. They would, perhaps, pass through to the end of the valley, but Miranda would surely be yet another day's trek. Adel would undoubtedly react with violence when she learned of this, and Kefka wondered distantly if the end of the day would mean the end of his life. Of course, it would mean hers as well, as he would hardly go down without at least mortally wounding her.

Kefka shook his head and gave the sorceress a wave to dismiss his momentary lapse into thought and began moving forward yet again. The air here seemed slightly cooler and in the faint shadows of the surrounding mountains the sun wasn't nearly as menacing. The trek through the mountains became almost leisurely to Kefka who, in an effort to ignore the smug sorceress behind him, had retreated into his mind again, despite the possible danger that lingered in his near future. While it made sense, the fact that the world had returned itself to balance both baffled and annoyed him. The idea that this land, which he had worked so hard to raze and make his own, had reverted was infuriating!

A distant noise quickly drew him from his thoughts, and for a moment Kefka found himself very aware of the walls that now enclosed them and just what could be lurking there. He hoped there were bears. He could deal with bears; giant, hulking, demanding sorceresses he could not. At least with bears you can play dead and Kefka was good at playing dead.

[Adel]

Adel felt slightly uneasy at a distant sound that seemed to creep up on her from every direction at once. At first it was hardly noticeable and came in small bursts. Then, after a small while, it became constant but distant. She wondered for a few seconds if another creature was making its way toward them, as it seemed to be getting closer. However, soon the sound became much more discernable, and she realized that—while she would not be dealing with another monster—she would soon be buried in rocks.

A rockslide was suddenly on its way down the mountains toward them, for which Adel initially almost burst into laughter. The odds of the events occurring to her today happening at all was so staggeringly low that she couldn’t help but find them humorous. It was as though fate itself was conspiring against her. For a Lunar Cry to occur and happen to suck in her tomb was unlikely enough as it was, but in addition she had landed in Centra, the smallest of continents, with Kefka, the maddest of men, after which she was assaulted by a new species of abyss worm, caught in desert rainstorm, and set upon by and rockslide; all the while her powers being unusually sealed and the world’s very geography being called into question.

Unfortunately, Adel’s pondering on the subject left her simply staring upward at the falling rocks in a strange combination of fascination, amusement, and spite. Spite was always in there, at least somewhere in the back.

[Kefka Palazzo]

The sound grew, distant rumblings ascending into a sharp, cacophonous roar. The noise echoed all around them, reverberating off the walls, almost deafening. Kefka slowed to a stop, turning his head to where he approximated the noise was coming from, and whooped loudly. For a moment Kefka saw what very well could have been bears tumbling down the mountainside. They weren't, of course, but Kefka couldn't help himself snickering at the thought. He spared a glance at Adel, and it wasn't until he registered the odd smirk on her face that he realized just what was happening here.

His arms flailed wildly for a moment as he looked back to the crumbling mountainside, so that he nearly lost his balance. Gut-wrenching laughter threatened to pour out of him for a second time as he stood there, motionless. He was sure this was some kind of joke-- had he really been slighted again? The gods sure did seem to have it out for him; perhaps it was that whole playing at god bit. Eheh.

Kefka floundered for only a moment as the mountain threatened to bury him. He turned abruptly, leaping out of the way just as the pebbles hit his feet, and unfortunately proceeded to barrel straight into the still sorceress. They flew back a few feet, tumbling over each other and out of the way of a rather large stray boulder, and came to a halt right as the mass of rock and boulders spilled into the open valley. He was knocked sideways as a hunk of rock glanced off his shoulder and knocked him off of Adel so that he landed on his back just a few feet away.

As the last of the debris settled into the valley, Kefka tilted his head back and opened his eyes to an upside-down view of what had nearly killed them both. It was then, despite being winded and despite the dull ache in his shoulder, that the madman gave into the tremors in his gut. Laughter bubbled up and out of his lips as he lay there, gasping for breath. Eheheh...! Priceless.

[Adel]

Adel was more than a little disappointed by her reflexes at the moment. Not only had they failed to keep that little insect of a man from pushing her into her tomb, but now they had nearly gotten her crushed under an unsavory number of large and heavy rocks. She had intended to begin running from the rocks, of course, but realized that, had Kefka not pushed her out of the way, she would not have started running quickly enough.

Kefka, on the other hand, had reacted rather quickly. Not only had he been faster than Adel, but his first action had been to tackle Adel head on to save her from the oncoming rockslide. She had been upstaged by a selfless and—damn it all—heroic action. Then Kefka had proceeded to laugh, presumably out of some combination of madness and relief. Everything Kefka did was more than likely the product of a combination of madness and something.

Adel sat up after the dust had settled, slowly standing to her feet and checking herself over. She appeared unharmed, for which she was almost annoyed. Kefka had done a perfect job of saving her, and now she was obligated to keep him around. Not morally obligated, of course: she was being reasonable, not stupid. No, she would have to keep him around because he was a moderately powerful man who was apparently willing to save her life in an emergency. This would have been wonderful news had she not retained the desire to slaughter him like…well…there were too many things to pick from.

This left Adel with the uncomfortable urge to reward Kefka with some sort of thanks. Had a servant or soldier of hers done the same, he would have had the privilege of a promotion, raise, or opportunity to enlist in the cybernetic augmentation program. It was only fitting that her subjects feel inclined to repeat their actions in the future should the opportunity arise, after all. As it stood, however, Adel possessed nothing to reward the man with. She could offer verbal thanks, of course, but a combination of pride and hatred prevented her from considering it.

“You…” Adel paused, looking for the words. “You saved me.” She spoke guardedly, the words feeling foreign in general, and feeling no less so in being spoken to Kefka of all people. The urge to reward him gnawed at the back of her mind, but again, she had nothing to give. She would need to enlist the ass in her forces once they reached Esthar. He could be properly dealt with, one way or the other, if he served under her.

“You’re not useless after all.”

[Kefka Palazzo]

"Ahaaa... ahaha!" Kefka fought to catch his breath between bouts of laughter, wiping the tears from his eyes as he sat up. He glanced at Adel as she rose to her feet. His laugher soon died down to quiet giggles as he prepared for the beating he knew he was soon to receive. The sorceress certainly did not look pleased. Why did he have to run into her, anyway? She was surely pissed, and if he had jumped just a little to the left, she'd be under a rather large pile of rocks now.

Resigned to his fate, the court mage rose to his feet; he certainly wouldn't take this lying down. He didn't bother to dust himself off, instead favoring his left shoulder where the rock had hit him. He winced at the possibility of Adel hitting him there, as the tissue was already developing an angry bruise. Kefka opened his mouth to redirect the sorceress, but stopped when he noticed the look she was giving him. Something about it made him uneasy, and when she spoke, he knew why.

Kefka was floundering again, only now he was facing a barrage of feelings rather than rocks. He hadn't meant to save her, and now he couldn't decide if the fact that she took it that way was a curse or a blessing. "Useless? Yo-- I... of, uh, of course not." He dusted himself off, now, and let out a rather fake chuckle, confident that she wasn't going to try anything funny. As much as he wanted to strangle her for assuming such a ridiculous thing, it was keeping him out of trouble and out of pain and that was all he needed. "Yes. I, um, I saved you," he mumbled, not looking at her. He turned stiffly and raised his arms in regard to the pile of rocks ahead. "Lets, ah, get going then. This, you know, this is going to slow us down." Damnit, Kefka, play along! You will not be eaten!

[Adel]

Adel raised an eyebrow at Kefka’s suspiciously nervous tone, but chalked it up to the odd little harlequin feeling strange about saving a life. It was clearly out of his element, which would have made the sorceress feel special if it hadn’t already made her sick. No time for feeling anything at the moment, though. Kefka was right: they were wasting time. One more day out in the wilderness isolated with her ‘companion’ and Adel might start getting delusional and enjoying his company. She shuddered at the thought as she began following him.

Time passed without much happening; Adel feeling less compelled to insult Kefka lest he fail to choose saving her a second time should the opportunity present itself. After a time, the sun began to set again, and Adel looked angrily at her guide as she realized she was going to have to spend another night without a real roof over her head. She would think even someone as mad as Kefka would be able to remember how far the nearest town was to his tower. Didn’t he need to go there for supplies of some kind? He couldn’t be living on sandworms alone, and while his clothes were ragged, the ones under his coat looked new enough. Something wasn’t adding up.

“You’re not taking me to a town, are you?” She asked with a combination of betrayal and annoyance lacing her words. He was lost. Not only were they no longer going northwest, but Kefka had clearly changed direction once the shoreline came into view. Either he was lost, he was stalling, or he had a terrible sense of how long it took to get somewhere. Something didn’t add up.

[Kefka Palazzo]

Kefka heaved a sigh of relief when Adel made no further comments. He didn't need to be thanked, nor did he want it, and as far as he could tell, that was the closest the sorceress would get to it. It certainly was out of his character to save someone. He didn't make a habit out of the act, and when he did choose to save someone it would certainly be of his own volition. Not this-- this was an accident! Although he supposed that letting her think otherwise would be his best bet; she hadn't made any snide comments in the past couple of minutes, and he was content to take that as a good sign. He paused to glance back at her, only to shrug and continue walking.

They passed through the valley in relative silence, an even which Kefka regarded as a blessing given his present company. He had been correct in his assumption that they would clear the mountains by the end of the day-- the rockslide hadn't slowed them down as much as he had thought. Still, the sorceress was not going to be happy, and for a moment he was grateful for her recognition of the little accident earlier. He came to a slow stop just a while away from the end of the mountain range when Adel spoke up behind him.

"you're not taking me to a town, are you?"

Kefka cringed. He knew it was coming, he just wished it hadn't. "Look, lady," he started, turning on his heel to address the woman. "I told you-- I've been at the bottom of that pile for a while. Maybe a rock hit me in the head!" It was true. There were things that Kefka didn't quite remember right. His memories were just a little fuzzy and he couldn't have that. Not if he was going to take back what was his. "What do you want from me?," he shook his head, eyebrows and shoulders raising in unison. "I said I was taking you to a town, I'm taking you to a town. I just... miscalculated a little bit." A bit of the confidence had returned to his voice as he turned to scan the mountains. "Listen. I don't want to be about here any more than you do. I have my own agenda." He spotted a small cave in the side of one mountain and grinned. Worst case? Bears. Best case? Bears. Heh. "So I suggest we just, you know, man up and get along until we get out of here." He delivered a pointed look to her and, with an eerily charming smile, moved in the direction of the cave.

[Adel]

Adel hesitated a moment before following Kefka into the cave. She couldn’t help but think that the fool’s agenda was little more than surviving for the next few hours. Still, as suspicious as she was of the supposed god, she had nowhere else to go at the moment. Kefka might indeed have had no idea where he was going, but it would be a chance she would have to take. Miscalculation indeed. He knew full well he could just reassure her and move on, and that she wouldn’t be able to say a thing about it. Well, she could, but she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it and it would only serve to make Kefka less likely to help her in the future.

As the two reached the cave, Adel noted immediately how deep it seemed to go. She wondered briefly if the mountains contained tunnels, but quickly dismissed the thought as uninteresting. She looked at Kefka in annoyance, almost too exhausted to sneer at him, and sat in the dirt; plunking her hideous parasol down next to her, which she had kept in case they crossed another desert. That had been her excuse, anyways. In reality she needed something to beat Kefka with in the event that he turned on her. “This is humiliating.” She grumbled, almost wishing she were back in the desert. The shelter they’d built was hardly comfortable, and perhaps drove her slightly mad, but at the moment she was sitting in a cave. At least the shelter was some kind of civilization.

Civilization. At this thought, Adel became homesick for Esthar. The brilliant, gigantic azure city of lights would be lighting up around sunset. “It was never truly night in Esthar, they said.” Adel regaled Kefka, half out of wistfulness, and half out of intent to amaze Kefka. She thought, perhaps, that she could convince him that Esthar was a place worth visiting. If she could, he would have to take her to civilization so they could go there. “The sun would go down, but the city stayed aglow with lights. Thousands of them.” She continued, almost feeling a genuine smile coming on. “There are buildings as tall as this mountain, for as far as the eye could see. Translucent blue highways are everywhere in the air, and transportation pipes that lead to every location of importance trace their paths across the city.” She sighed. She could almost sleep, thinking about the city she once ruled. Almost.

A vague awareness of Kefka’s presence snapped the sorceress back into consciousness. She grumbled to herself something about moombas eating the man, chuckling to herself as she looked outside. She could have sworn she heard something a moment ago, but was too tired to care. Probably just Kefka.

[Kefka Palazzo]

As Kefka stepped into the cave, he found the change in atmosphere to be refreshing. It wasn't a dramatic shift by any means, but the air in here was cooler and wetter than the air outside. He slowed, watching Adel as she moved past him and took a seat on the cave floor. The cavern had been much wider than he thought; it stretched up and out from the entrance and looked as if it ran for miles through the mountains. It couldn't be guaranteed, however, and they certainly couldn't risk the trip to find out. This didn't change things, of course; they would need a fire.

He glanced quickly at the seated sorceress before sighing and moving to gather kindling, as he was sure she couldn't be asked to help. She made a comment, to which he grunted as he knelt down to arrange the wood in a way that satisfied him. With a small gesture, Kefka aimed a fire spell at the pile of wood in front of him, lighting up a good potion of the cavern in the process. The echo of Adel's voice almost startled him. There was something in her voice--nostalgia, perhaps--that Kefka had never heard from her before. That was enough to pique his interest.

Of course, there she was again, spinning some tale about this Esthar that he was sure did not exist. Her voice, though, and the way she spoke-- it was as if she believed with all of her being that this Esthar was real. Had he really be dead for that long? Kefka shook his head, a sour look returning to his face when the sorceress mumbled something under her breath. The thought of throwing a rock at her quickly subsided when a bright flash caught in the corner of his vision. He slowly turned his gaze toward the entrance of the cavern where something had started up a quiet, but insistent racket. Whatever it was darted around a corner, and it was then that Kefka got a good look at just what was causing such a stir.

"B-b-b...BOMB!" The mage whirled around. "The fire! The fire attracted them!" He kicked frantically at the dirt, hoping the gesture would serve to snuff out the fire. Alerted by the noise, the explosive creatures ventured closer. Kefka panicked when they drifted too close, skittering back past the sorceress and nearly tripping over her umbrella. He lifted a hand to blast one of the bombs, stopping short after a moment of thought. "That won't do... you wouldn't, ah, happen to have any ice magic, would you?" With a nervous laugh, he grabbed a rock from the cave floor, ready to throw it should the fiery beings wander any closer.

[Adel]

Adel looked quickly in the direction Kefka seemed to be concerned with. When he’d first yelled out that they were dealing with a bomb, she’d of course assumed that someone was assaulting them with artillery. She could imagine why, of course. Esthar likely knew of her escape by now, and would send teams out to verify her status. How unexpectedly prudent of them to use bombs, though, rather than attempt more covert or conservative methods of assassination. Whoever had replaced her as Esthar’s sovereign was no fool if they were starting with explosives and working their way up. They knew who they were dealing with, and indeed such firepower would have been necessary to even hope to defeat her while she was at her peak. Indeed Adel might have to delay the toppling of this replacement of hers until she’d built up more power.

Then, of course, she saw the creatures Kefka was fleeing from like an idiot and realized he was merely referring to them. Adel didn’t know much about the things, truth be told. She remembered somewhere in the back of her mind a report regarding monsters that were exploding and causing heavy damage to research teams in Centra. Obviously they were explosive with a name like that—a trait that no doubt intensified the rarity of the creatures—but she couldn’t for the life of her remember what set them off. Fire, she imagined. That would explain why Kefka had just asked her about ice magic.

Standing quickly and taking note that the beasts were no longer merely headed in her general direction, but were intently darting toward the fire, Adel gestured at the bombs and concentrated on the cold. “Blizzard!” She yelled forcefully, her hand frosting over like a well cooled drink but otherwise accomplishing nothing. She narrowed her eyes in annoyance as she realized how much grief that could have saved her in the desert, and reached down for her improvised weapon before backing away slowly from the explosive intruders.

“No, I don’t.” She answered Kefka unnecessarily as she stopped backpedaling and looked back into the cave. For all Adel knew it was a dead end, and she very much doubted they would stop at the fire and leave her alone anyways. She wouldn’t be side-tracked any more than she had to be. Wielding her parasol halves as weapons as she had so many times now, Adel charged one of the bombs head-on and began attacking them. As she expected, they weren’t as threatening as they looked; relying on low level fire magic that, while painful, wasn’t going to kill her at this rate. One attempted to charge her and was met with the ‘shield’ she carried, while another did the same and knocked her to the ground. Standing back up quickly, Adel was not one to be deterred by minor setbacks. She was winning, she knew for sure. She didn’t even mind that Kefka was standing back and watching yet again, even though she knew full well that he had a perfectly serviceable knife on hand. The sorceress was entirely happy beating the bombs to death with the pole, although this was in part due to her hope that they could be eaten.

One of the creatures, the one she had focused on the most because it had had knocked her over, finally died as she bludgeoned a fairly large crease in between its eyes. The other, the larger of the two, was still bearing down on her, but Adel knew she could handle it. “Wait…” Adel spoke with extreme hesitance before leaping away from an incoming ball of fire. Something wasn’t right about that thought. The ‘larger of the two’ was still bearing down on her? Yes, that was right. The one she was fighting now was definitely bigger than the one on the ground, but that made no sense. They had been indistinguishable when she’d started fighting them, hadn’t they? Had the dead one shrunk, or had the larger one…?

“Damn it, Kefka!” Was the last thing the angry woman had gotten out before the bomb finally went off, setting off its fallen comrade in the process and sending Adel reeling into the cave. As she slipped into the sweet sleep she’d been unable to enter for years, she could almost thank the blasted thing. It was a shame she’d wake up with such a headache, assuming she didn’t die.