True ending:

Horatio gasped deeply. He couldn’t quite believe it. The battle had been terrible—the worst of his life, and they had sustained many injuries and wounds. But they had Brax cowed, and on the point of defeat.

The great Demon trembled, its arms held up to either side of it, but unable to move any further than that. Alex had it held at bay in its weakened state in some sort of force field, bright white light shining from his hands.

‘Do it!’ Alex was saying to him. ‘Do it now, Horatio! Use the Clarent Sword! Send him back to Hell!’

Horatio looked down at the legendary weapon in his hand.

Just a simple sword, with an ordinary metal cross-piece hilt, and an ordinary straight double-edged blade coming out of it, ending in a triangular tip. Except the blade wasn’t entirely ordinary. It burned with fire. And not the cruel, hellish fire of Braxia. A brighter, holy, purifying fire. The Fire of Qind.

This is my moment, Horatio thought.

This is my destiny.

I can’t be the hero of every story, but I can be the hero of this story.

He pulled the sword back and up behind his head, blade pointing forwards, and ran at Brax, roaring his courage.

When he reached the demon king he plunged the blade of the Clarent Sword into Brax’s forehead, right into the third eye [mention eyes earlier at transformation] that had appeared there, just as he had done to the Leader of the Cult.

The blade sunk in to the hilt, and stuck.

A heartbeat.

And then Brax screamed and exploded into purple gas.

Horatio was thrown backwards from the force of the explosion and landed with a clang on his back on the floor of the chamber, hitting his head and seeing stars.

He looked up at the stone roof of the chamber.

All had gone quiet.

No more screaming profanities. No more monsters screeching. No more wings flapping, or cultists cursing, or foul creatures scuttling.

With a great effort, Horatio pulled himself up and onto his feet.

Around him, his companions were doing the same.

They all looked around the chamber, as if they couldn’t believe that Brax and all the monsters had gone.

‘We did it,’ Egea said eventually.

‘We did it?’ said Silvia.

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‘WE DID IT!’ Horatio shouted, jubilation reinvigorating his aching muscles and sending a new lease of life through him.

‘You did it, Horatio!’ Ceres said to him.

‘We defeated Brax!’ said Tyler. ‘I can’t believe it!’

[The next lines of dialogue can be rearranged at whim.]

‘Our quest is complete!’ said Ross.

‘Woohoo!’ said Wyvera.

‘Ouzo is very pleased!’ said Ouzo.

‘Now I can return home!’ said Tyler.

‘A valiant victory, my comrades!’ said Walter.

‘Thank Qind in Heaven!’ said Ursula.

‘My Grandfather is avenged,’ said Olivia.

‘Our prey is felled!’ said Helen.

‘Well done, all of you,’ said Alex. ‘Qind is triumphant!’

The victory cries all blended together as everyone cheered and whooped and began to dance around in the chamber at the bottom of the pit beneath the Tower of Tartarus. It was an odd place to be dancing a victory jig, Horatio thought somewhere at the back of his mind, but he didn’t care. They had done it! They had really done it! They had defeated Brax! He could barely believe it!

They all clapped and slapped their open palms against each other’s and embraced one another.

Only Primus did not embrace anybody.

When Ceres took a turn at embracing Horatio, she held on a bit longer than expected. ‘Horatio?’ she whispered in his ear, tentatively.

‘Er, yes?’ Horatio said back.

‘That proposal you made. Now that we’ve achieved what we set out to do here, if we make it back from here alive—I might be in a position to reconsider it.’

As if this moment could get any more glorious, a strange, beautiful light began to suffuse Horatio’s mind, from behind his eyes.

‘Oh,’ he said to Ceres. ‘I am very pleased about that.’

She smiled at him, and they broke the embrace.

And then the victory celebrations were cut short with a shock as all of a sudden the whole chamber began to shake, with a bone-rattling rumble all around that sounded like thunder underground.

Dirt and dust started to dislodge and fall down from the stone ceiling.

‘What’s happening?’ Horatio yelled over the noise, putting his hands out to steady himself.

‘I think the Tower is about to collapse!’ called back Alex. ‘Somehow the defeat of Brax is bringing it down! I think this chamber is going to cave in on itself!’

‘We’ll never make it out in time!’ cried Ceres as whole chunks of the ceiling, and piles of earth, began to fall.

‘Quick!’ yelled Ursula. ‘All of you! To me! I should have just enough mana to teleport us all out of here!’

Horatio grabbed Ceres’ hand in his right, and some instinct made him grab Silvia’s with his left, and they pelted for Ursula.

A huge rock fell from the ceiling, as they run, landing behind them with a chest-constricting crunch.

They practically crashed into Ursula, who was chanting and holding her hands together, and then they were engulfed by a bright white light, a noise like rushing wind, and Horatio’s stomach lurched, and they were taken away from the Pit of Tartarus even as it collapsed in on itself.

And then they were somewhere else, lying on a grassy field, blinking in morning sunshine.

Morning? Horatio thought.

A couple of white fluffy clouds were drifting by in an increasingly blue sky.

‘Where did you teleport us too, Ursula?’ Horatio asked the former Sorceress, who was standing up and brushing herself off as the others did the same.

‘Just outside Balamb,’ she said.

‘Why here?’

‘Well, why not? Qind knows you lot talk about this place enough.’

‘It was well chosen,’ said Ceres.

Horatio bent down and helped the priestess up to her feet.

We did it, Horatio thought as he looked at her smiling face.

We won.

THE END