When the smoke had finally settled, the town of Cadia was but a shell of its former glory. The town that had once been the pride of the Governor was now nothing but still-smoldering ruins held together by dried-up husks of Monstrum material.
The scorched bricks of the tavern collapsed beneath their own weight as Luna and Serah cautiously made their way back towards the Garrison. With every step, the dehydrated remnants of what had once been vasculature, tentacles or a hive sprayed fine crimson dust to the winds - staining the gusts traversing the dead, empty streets.
Serah was exhausted and with her right arm slung over Luna’s shoulder, she glanced around for any remaining signs of life. Night had come and gone as they hid under the thick carpet of smoke in silence - their minds too numbed by the horrors of Cadia to speak a word to one-another.
As they arrived out on the upheaved cobbled strip that had once been the main street, they caught some shapes to the left - down by the tall skeleton of a marbled church.
Jorn’s back was turned in their direction as he dug around in the dust alongside Captain Jarek.
Mara stood with her arms crossed over her chest, while the guardsmen kept their rifles trained in every direction.
None spoke a word as the two hobbled their way down the street - what was anyone to say? The day had come, insanity had spewed out from the hells below and just as quickly - without an explanation, the world had returned to silence. It was as if nothing had ever happened - as if the town of Cadia had never been a sprawling town of farmers.
“They’re inside.” Mara spoke, staring at the door leading into the church.
Serah let go of Luna’s shoulder and staggered in place, rubbing her pained, red eyes - perhaps this time it would work. Luna swallowed and looked to the darkness beyond the marble archway and swallowed, questioning: “What happened? Is this what happens to Monstrum when they die?”
A moment’s silence ensued as all hoped anyone might’ve come up with an answer. Alas, it would be Jorn who’d shake his head and speak over his shoulder: “No… No, I ain’t sure what happened here, girl. None of us are. All we knows is that this watn’t supposed to happen. This shouldn’t be possible.” He grabbed hold of a tendril of dry meat, crushed it in his hands and watched it dissipate in the air.
In the cellar, Logan sat leaned against the wall, staring into the abyss on the opposite end of the chamber. Abraham had worked tirelessly with his tinderbox and the lamp to extend the flames to either wall of the shaft beyond. He even had some results to show for it, as the landscape beyond the irregular window of broken bricks was covered in massive, thick bundles of vasculature - sites of apparent attachment for whatever had been interfacing with Cadia’s network of Monstrum tendrils.
Logan could only speculate, but he had his theories. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen in nature, but long ago he’d seen the docking bays of the subnautic batteries that would be fitted into a slot in Sitabee’s infrastructure to charge them. For however long that was, the batteries would provide the station with extra storage capacity and, with some minute changes to the software, the panels would be capable of controlling certain modalities of the batteries.
Transferring what he knew of Sitabee to the evidence before him, he’d been led to conclude that what he had seen as he forced the priest into the hive’s wall was, in fact, not a hive at all. It had been the monstrosity itself - a humongous Monstrum that had since disconnected itself from the surrounding infrastructure to recede back into the darkness. The rumbling hadn’t been any of his doing, nor had it been the ignition of a subterranean deposit of gas… it had been the sound of his enemy’s retreat.
As he stared at the posterior of his confused apprentice peering into the dark void of an unending tunnel, he found himself judging that an explosion might’ve been preferable to the implication that his enemy was wise enough not only to infiltrate and manipulate humans… but actually retreat once it had nothing more to gain.
“Are you all right?” He snapped out of his musings at the sound of a comfortable, familiar voice. He felt naked for a moment as he looked up to see Luna’s red eyes stare down at him. Her dark-blonde hair, like her usually black clothes, were painted with streaks of white-gray ashes. She appeared as confused as he was - they both imagined they had as many unanswered questions as the other, but a brief, passing, pain-influenced smile quickly flashed across her lips as she saw his mask on the floor next to a neatly folded piece of paper on the ground next to him.
He lay his head back against the wall, letting her see the deep circular wounds and torn clothing atop his ribs - where he had forced the symbiote’s tentacles to his will when he still thought there was a fight to be had.
“I still can’t get used to how you look at me.” He confessed, flashing a pained smile of his own. With a slight limp of her weary right leg, she slumped down next to him and joined the confused man in staring at the apprentice’s posterior.
“The way I look at you?” She questioned. He nodded. “You’ve seen more of my monster than most people have, but…” Despite wishing to slap the man ten times over for abandoning her, for charging head-first into the fray and for her many still-unanswered questions, she knew that feeling.
As brave as he fronted being, she’d known Guy long before he became Logan. She’d seen this pain in his eyes back before he’d learned to hide it and she knew what helped relieve his pain - their pain. She reached over to grip his tattered, gloved hand. She had questions regarding his missing fingers, but they’d have to wait. What he needed at that time wasn’t an inquisition, it was… her. She spoke gently as she said:
“You might have some fucked-up teeth and a weird eye. But you weren’t the one who tried to poison us. You weren’t the one who locked someone into a bomb-laden station and you weren’t the one to execute those men in the field outside this town. You’re the one who worked tirelessly on fixing Sitabee’s systems and you’re the one who saved Anza from that Monstrum. If you’re the monster, I think we’ve gotta reevaluate if we’re really better off saving the humans.”
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He scoffed his bitter bemusement and drew a deep sigh of the still, stuffy air of the cavern-and-cellar complex. “I had my own, selfish reasons for that. But I guess that’s a debate of ethics - ends justifying the means and all that. I’m glad I didn’t fail at those.” So rarely did she see him wallow in his self-pity. In fact, it was a rare thing to see him so vulnerable altogether. Despite their current circumstances - or perhaps because of the circumstances, she needed to listen.
“Judging by what people say about you, it doesn’t sound like you’ve failed that much. You’re a real hero of the people up here.” Logan looked up to the ceiling.
“I’m not sure what that even means. ‘Hero’. I’m not sure a hero would let this happen. Thousands of people died here and the Monstrum even got away. And Smile…” It was a comfort hearing that twinge in his voice - the one that spoke of his undigested, raw emotions; emotions he didn’t even understand, himself.
“You never got to see Guy-day down there. Well, it was called ‘Core-day’, but they celebrated you and your…” Even after the fact - even after knowing he hadn’t truly died, it was still difficult to say it. He chuckled at the irony of being celebrated in two different places, despite most people deeming him as monstrous as the creatures that he’d attempted to root out in the first place.
He reached over to the letter on the ground and held it demonstratively in his free hand. “The Ghasts… when we get killed, we don’t usually leave much for the people around us. So we write these - our final words to our friends and colleagues. Smile gave me this yesterday… it’s almost like she knew.” Luna knew they’d get to that topic sooner or later.
“W-when you say… she knew… does that mean?...” He nodded, seemingly unbothered by the fact.
“Torn to pieces. The creature left as soon as it had taken her.” She’d already known. It was hard not to reach that conclusion on her own. Still, the confirmation stung her chest as if she’d had a dagger sunk into it. She hung her head and choked back a tear. They hadn’t been friends - in fact, what little interactions had been between them had been hostile, yet she’d laid down her life for her. Even smiled as she’d done so.
“S-She saved me… that’s how she…” Logan waved the letter. “That’s on my conscience, not yours. This is as much a confession as they’re her last words.” Luna bit back her tears to ask: “What does it say?” She immediately caught herself feeling bad for even having asked such a question. These were personal words - words meant for Logan and no one else.
To her surprise, he didn’t hesitate in answering: “During her training, she fell in love with me. Over time, it struck her that I didn't reciprocate those feelings, and, due to what she concluded was my inability to do so, she wanted to do what she could to keep working with me. Which is why she suppressed herself whenever we were together.”
Again, her chest felt as if it was about to burst. She’d felt the tension, but she’d never imagined that the reasons might’ve been so cruel. The fact someone else had feelings for him became secondary - she harbored no jealousy or embarrassment on her behalf, only pity and a profound strike of melancholy.
“There’s no way of knowing, Luna. But I’m suspecting she did what she did for me, not for you.” There was little comfort in knowing that. Surely, it helped lessen the feeling of guilt, but it did little to dispel the pity and compassion she felt for the misfortuned Ghast.
Logan rose from the floor and pocketed the paper. Luna rose with him and together, they wandered over to stare through the hole in the wall with Abraham.
When Logan spoke, his voice echoed in the cavernous opening in the wall. “Any finds to report?”
Abraham ran a hand over his sweaty, naked face but shook his head. It was the first time Logan had actually seen the result of Serah’s training, both in finally seeing the factum his trainee had no eyebrows on his greasy face and the long strand of fire extending from the lantern and into the dark, unending depths.
“Nothing. I think it’s a tunnel leading somewhere. It’s massive… but I did see more of these.” With a wave of his free hand, the snaking head of the fire extended downwards, to the wall of the cavern just beneath them, where another pad of crusty flesh had been torn cleanly off.
Logan offered: “It looks like an umbilical cord. I think that’s where the Monstrum connected to the infrastructure it set up in the streets.”
Abraham attempted to convey a shallow understanding of the subject, but failed miserably. It was clear, to both his companions, he understood little to nothing. Luna appreciated his use of mechanical terms, but still found it hard to think of the Monstrum as anything as well-functioning as the System.
She spoke: “So… what do we do now? Is it coming back?” Logan seemed thoroughly convinced when he shook his head. “No. There’s nothing more for it to gain here except more damage. That’s why it left…” There was a hint of a familiar darkness to his voice as he spoke, his disgust for the creature obvious in his tone.
Luna leaned back to look into his heterochromatic eyes. “What else? There’s something you’re not saying.” Despite their lengthy time apart, she could still tell when he was being avoidant.
“I’ve fought a lot of Monstrum. Behemoths, Gargants - I’ve seen things on the frontier we don’t even have names for… but I’ve never seen something like this. This tactic - it’s not unheard of in other species, but I got the feeling it was studying us like we’re studying it. It calculated the cost-benefit of staying and decided to withdraw… Monstrum don’t retreat. If I hadn’t been here, I’d have protested if someone had told me.”
The trio raised their hands in similar scratches of their chins.
Finally, Logan spoke up again: “But I know what we have to do next. This threat’s bigger than the hives and we need to deal with it before we do anything else… however…” Logan glanced at the torn hole in the wall again. “We’re going to need some help.”
Abraham cocked his head and held the lamp up to illuminate his unsightly face. “That sounds like a good idea… but who’s gonna help us out here?”
Logan raised a flat palm and clarified: “We need the other Hands. It’s been years since this Monstrum last moved on Crunt, so hopefully we’ve got time. We need to go to the Citadel to request aid, which isn’t going to be an easy ask.” Luna had heard about the Citadel many times over - for a while she’d hardly heard about anything but.
“W-Who… who are you gonna ask? That sounds like a big request, if y-you don’t mind me saying…” Abraham chimed in.
Logan was appreciating the emergence of the boy’s testicles - it was a start, if nothing else. “I’ll ask the Governor. He’ll tell me what I need to do from there… but make no mistake. Even if we don’t get help, I’ll find a way to kill this thing, even if I have to go after it alone.”
“Well, you won’t be alone.” Luna chimed in from the side, gripping Logan’s hand again to smile comfortingly at him.
“N-No, Sir. We’re with you… I need to prove to Jorn that I’m worthy of Serah’s hand and helping you kill this Demon is exactly what he’s asked of me.” He reached for Logan’s free hand, only for the Ghast to withdraw from the reeking, ash-coated fingers to glare at the boy with confusion.
“Wait, what?”