Session 70 - In the Mouth of Madness

Previously, Across The Horizon...
Deep below the surface, down past the room of the twelve pedestals, below the library, beneath the guardian chamber, and far from their transport ship Meteor, our brave adventurers have found the core of Alexander... the core, infested by a Parasite.
The Argent Defender, corrupted by the Parasite, battled the party, but did not succeed in its quest to vanquish them, with Yves and Yves's afterimage proving the deciding factor. With the mask of the Parasite fallen, Alexander had a moment to communicate with the party, imploring them to flee before they would also be trapped, "from the end to the beginning," just as Alexander had been.
The Parasite then revealed to have been in possession of Azdar Chid's body, and offered to trade their safe exit for the Starfall.
Yves communicated his rejection of the offer quite clearly.
The Parasite brought the core of the Edge of the World to life, the library shelves corrupted and consumed by the sickly red light of madness, husks pouring forth to surround the party, to flood the chamber, promising to "find the great crystal that was taken."
The Parasite, Azi Dahaka, controls Alexander, and time is running out.
**
Aurin shakes himself clear of the fog that was clouding his mind. "We need to get out of here," he says, looking around at the approaching pulsing husks of once-living people.
"Ah," says Yves. "Well. Um. Yes. Right. That. Yes."
Isa sweeps her gaze around the area, and shifts her grip to the back end of her spear - a move presaging a sweep attack if necessary - before saying "Right. Get moving."
"It didn't let go of you when you were in Mechon." Bast reloads his crossbow. "Not seeing how running would change that."
"Ideally without fighting our way through this thing." Linnet chews her lip and evaluates her companions for existing damage. "Everyone ready to run like hell?"
"Chid was always there," Aurin says, reaching for Bast to drag him if necessary. "Bast, we are abandoning the plan! Consider it sunk! We have got to get out of here!"
"We can't let it get to--" Yves clutches his satchel rather than finish that sentence, and starts backing up, rather stairsward.
"I do believe our instructions were 'find it and kill it'. Who's up for a fight?" Bast's teeth gleam faintly in the Parasite's glow.
"all is known here," Azi Dahaka growls, tines of a fork dragging down dirty glass. "become a chapter in his saga."
"Bast, I can't bring you back if this thing smashes you to bits again!"
"Sometimes you have to adjust your hypothesis based on new evidence! Like an entire... this!" Yves sort of nods towards the. Everything.
The husks are drawing closer and closer. "remain, captain," the Parasite croons. "go down with the ship."
"Back up to the stairs. Let's concentrate the bastards."
"Oh thank fuck. I was afraid Aurin and I were going to have to drag you."
Isa makes sure everyone is between her and the stairs before she begins her retreat.
Yves bolts with a lanky speed he doesn't often show, now that all that is decided.
Bast makes a curt gesture at Orrey with a grenade - then lobs it directly into the party's path. "Get in close!" A purple clock face fades in around it as it arcs and bounces, the hands spinning madly. Bast comes to a stop a mere step away, frantically motioning everyone closer. 
Isa backs her way towards...the live grenade. She's not thinking about it too hard.
Yves is in danger of stepping on it directly, and it's not clear he heard the instructions so much as that he's retreating and trying to stick close to the others at the same time.
Linnet just runs directly behind Bast.
The grenade explodes in a burst of violet light, blast wave and shrapnel hitting the party full-on...and passing through, scattering in a cloud of purple sparks.
There is a flare of golden light from Orrey's shoulders, so brief it must not have happened.
“Just in time!” Orrey grins as he feels the Hastiness kick in.
The explosion woke them up.
There is a violent surge of motion from the slowly approaching hordes.
The hordes pour of the darkness above and below, appearing on all sides, as Isa and Yves lead a very hasty retreat up the stairs back into the hallway that carried them down this far, moving faster than is traditionally possible.
The hallway is static and consistent underneath Yves's feet, but the floor and walls around the rest of the group twitches and rumbles, the debris arranging itself into mathematically-precise squares.
"Everything is very stable and cool," Yves whispers to himself.
The hallway thrums with a red pulse that separates the squares from each other, crimson light shining up from underneath, and then a wave of pistons slam up, down, and inward, steam hissing between the squares.
"Wait, I thought this was supposed to be ancient? What the -" Any further questions from Linnet are cut off by the slam of a piston in just the wrong place and the crack of sylph shoulders against a very solid chunk of wall.
Isa steps into the cavernous space of the guardian room, and looks at Yves. "Good, looks like we got space to brea....where are the others?"
The crack grabs Bast's attention for a split second; he grabs the piston that shoots up from the ground to take advantage of his distraction and spins halfway around it, redirecting his speed towards the fallen sylph - and the other piston that gets him head-on.
Yves looks back. Forward. Back. "...not.... with us? Oh no. It's. Do we. Do we go back? Or try to hold this space in case they're right behind us? Or go out for help? Or... I don't... this was not in--I don't know!"
Isa looks out of the room, to the maze of slamming pillars. "Alright. Catch your breath while we figure this out. If they're still in there, we can't help them. So either they're about to rejoin us, or they've gone on another way and we'll catch up. No point thinking about the alternative."
Linnet stirs almost a minute later and coughs violently. "Bast? Look for an opening and get us - or at least you - the fuck out of this room." "I can stop and make us a little less dead, but I can't do it in here."
Yves nods rapidly, taking several wheezing breaths. "...Principia! Are you okay?"
Bast moves his jaw to make sure it's still attached, and spits out some blood. He motions vaguely at the entrance to the library, away from the angry pistons. "In there?"
His eyes suddenly narrow in an angry scowl. "The fuck are you doing here?" He reaches for his crossbow as he speaks, eyes squarely on Linnet. "What did you do with Linnet?"
In the Guardian Room, Isa puts her hand out in front of Yves, looking towards the door. "Stay here. Hold the line. I'll be back when it's done."
"...I'm still Linnet? Bast, the hell are you doing? Please at least let me get into the library and try to heal us before you attack me." Linnet backpedals.  "Orrey, help me out here?" Linnet hauls herself painfully to her feet, slowly, eyeing her boss the way she'd eye a particularly large and uncooperative couerl.
Yves blinks a few times, and looks around. "...look, I'll meet you back here later, but I gotta get back to the lab or, uh, my supervisor will notice. Hold that thought, okay? I have some good ideas for next time." He starts an amble toward the door.
"Sure you are." Bast glances over at Orrey, gesturing angrily at the target of his ire. "How did we not notice Apoc following us in here?"
Isa's warding hand becomes a fist almost too quickly to see, and Yves finds his satchel strap, a bunch of his clothes, and probably some of his fur caught in an armored grip. "You hold the line," she says, inches away from his face and in a tone of voice that expects discipline and obedience. "This is our job."
Orrey looks at Bast and then the direction he’s shouting in.
"Right, that's enough. Orrey, please steer him toward the library and make sure he doesn't shoot me. One sneeze and I'm out for the count right now." Linnet very carefully picks her way out of the pistons and into the library, without taking her eyes off Bast.
The crossbow tracks her, holding steady.
A pulse fires out from the center of the library... heralding the imminent arrival of the shifting rooms from the core below.
“He is definitely not ok.” Orrey walks over towards the captain “Bast, that’s not Apoc. Lower your crossbow.”
"You're having a /real/ bad trip," Yves says, with a put-upon sigh, "and I appreciate that, I really do, but there are deadlines to meet and lab reports to write and so, c'mon, take a few deep breaths, and maybe a glass of milk? There's a whole jug in the office fridge, c'mon, blink a lot and try to remember where you were last. That might help." He pokes gingerly at the hand gripping him. "Niiiice deep breaths, happy thoughts, and plenty of liquids."
"...someone's in the library. Winds above, just let them not try to kill me either before I get a chance to heal up." Linnet keeps walking.
The walls start to rearrange themselves inside the Library, though occasionally light shines from up above, regular bluish-white light from a room accessible through the ceiling, a difficult path but a possible one. Not with Bast holding a crossbow on Linnet, though.
Linnet sees the path, stops, and turns to her companions. "Okay, look. Can I take a moment for a healing spell without you shooting me? Please?"
Orrey walks slowly in front of Bast, getting in the way of the crossbow bolt. “That’s Linnet, not Apoc. The Parasite has...I don’t know, imbued you with its essence or something.”
Isa's grip is unyielding. "We are under attack, Mrjwin. Your place is here, and mine is with her Majesty, and if you turn tail and run by Itami's hairy sack I will put you down myself."
"Are you blind and not just-" the menace in Bast's tone is undercut by a deep cough that brings up more blood. He looks away from the library entrance at Orrey - then back - then back at Orrey again, rage clearly rising.
"I'm not running," Yves says, in his most soothing tones, which are perhaps on the condescending side. "I'm trying to get back to work. You know, right over there, the same place you wanted to go, so let's walk back to the office together, and stop at the break room to get you a drink, okay?"
"FUCKING SERIOUSLY?" His finger tightens on the trigger and the bolt speeds away as the echoes bounce off the walls - back down the hall they came from.
“Not just what.” Orrey says flatly.
Planting her feet firmly behind Orrey in case Bast slips again, Linnet sighs - not too deeply, there are clearly several ribs broken - and makes a few very simple passes with her hands. The glitter is minimal this time, but the feeling of blood and bones restoring to their proper places should be familiar. As should the smell of cinnamon.
The crossbow bolt ricochets through an opening in the square pillars sealing the three of them in the Library, just wide enough to allow a moogle passage back the way he came.
Isa's frown deepens. "We'll drink when we're dead," she says with the easy nihilism of the soldier. "Can't trust you behind me, so you're coming with me. Step to!" she says, before all but hurling Yves ahead of her.
Bast draws in a shuddering breath as the healing washes over him, closing his eyes for a moment before lowering the crossbow and hobbling over to where he was trying to build a ramp on the party's way down. "Let's get out of here."
Yves squeaks faintly, but, okay, at least he's heading back toward the office, this is good, he can just harass his coworker about this bad trip later when everyone's sober, or at least a bit more clear-headed.
“You back to being you?” Orrey asks.
"Still looks like Apoc." Bast looks over at Linnet. "Pretty sure he doesn't make things smell like a bakery."
"Don't push it," Linnet hisses at Orrey in a whisper. "Thank you, Captain. After you."
"...and it's gone." Bast blinks a couple of times, mouth twisting in a grimace as he looks away from Linnet and begins to examine the walls.
In the Library, everything goes very red.
And then the rooms are here, pouring husks of knowledge out to engage everyone inside.
Yves's squeak has stopped, and suddenly he does as well. He looks at Isa. At the way they're heading. "...oh blight," he growls to himself, and with an anticipatory wince for imminent consequences... attempts to dig long, pointy viera fingernail-claws into Isa's less armored forearm. "WAKE UP."
The very idea of such insubordination is foreign to Isa; Yves's fingernails sink in before she even realizes what is happening.
“Are we fighting this?” Orrey asks, checking his watch.
"Well, backwards isn't going to get us any closer to safety. Time for some weeding!" (Linnet's tone compares this to "punching" or "burning" or any sort of very destructive activity, rather than "pulling plants out of dirt.")
"Well isn't that fucking nice." Bast's grimace is framed in blood leaking from the corner of his mouth as he slams another bolt in and fires at the head of the closest husk.
Isa looks down at Yves's hand as if just now seeing it, and then looks up at him. She's still angry, but now it has a new target. "Oh that's a dirty fucking trick..."
"Yeah, and I'm thinking that's exactly the direction we don't want to go," Yves says, tucking his hands behind his back. "Wait, or try to get further out? I was thinking, 'get help,' but between that other group behind us and whatever happens to their heads, and knowing we don't want to bring the ship here..." He trails off helplessly.
The sounds of fighting from the Library are audible in the Guardian Room.
"They're still alive," Isa says as she hears the sounds. "That's good. Look for another way out."
Yves nods rapidly, and looks around. Whispering to his satchel, as he does, "...Principia? Are you okay?"
Linnet swirls some more cinnamon sugar over her friends and follows it up with a handful of icicles thrown at the husks. Causing water damage to books is generally a really bad idea, but she's trying not to think about that too hard.
Principia shudders inside the satchel, not even wanting to speak lest the Parasite find them.
In the Guardian Room, the walls explode outward, water blasting in from all sides, trying to flood Isa and Yves back the way they came.
Orrey holds up his hand with the watch inside of it, another green fireball flying forward to destroy the knowledge husks. He follows with a stab of his knife that comes close to connecting, but fails to hit anything solid.
The head of Bast's first target disintegrates, husk empty of the Parasite's light toppling to the floor as his next bolt pins a rather decrepit-looking figure to one of the disintegrating bookshelves.
Rather suddenly, the husks cease their flight toward the bedraggled party and disintegrate into burnt, shredded, or damp piles of unreadable scrap.
The pouring hordes in the Library are turned back under a hail of bolts and magical eruptions, clearing the path for them to try and climb the shifting rooms up without falling under attack for at least the moment.
Linnet leans against a bookcase - testing it for structural integrity first - and grabs a bottle from her bag, quaffing an Ether like a drowning woman not going easy on her first bottle of water after the desert.
There is only the tiniest "Not my notes!" from Yves before he's overwhelmed by the deluge, vanishing inside a blast of water.
Bast leans against a bookcase, testing it for structural integrity, before planting a foot on one of the middle shelves and starting to climb.
Isa is swept off her feet as well, slamming into a pillar or two before she can recover her bearings. The force of the flood continues to lash at her until she struggles free some minutes later. She's grabbed a handful of Yves in her gauntlet again, though this time it is to drag him along instead of shove him into line. Neither of them look great.
Slightly less bedraggled, Linnet hauls herself up the shelves after Bast, restraining herself from pausing to read interesting titles. No time for that. ...today, at least.
"...guys, I think we're lost."
Yves twitches feebly against the dragging. "...gonna have so much cleaning to do, this probably set work back... weeks... if it got into... you know, the... stuff..."
"Could think of worse places to be right now." Bast gives the firearms an appraising glance.
"...aaaaaaaaaand of course we're lost, Linnet, we just left the nexus of magical shifting everything. Only take what you can carry, all right? Priority number one is getting out of here, priority number one-b is finding Isa and Yves and making sure they also get out of here." Linnet's a little frantic.
Isa doesn't stop dragging, but at least this time she's heading toward "out" instead of "back." She looks back at Yves's commentary, "Don't know what it's doing to you, or what it's doing to them, but we're getting out of here before it succeeds."
All of a sudden, Linnet's frantic planning calms like the passage into the eye of a hurricane. ...and she turns to head back down the bookcases.
"Linnet, that's the wrong way!" Orrey rushes over to her and tries to get in front of her before she descends.
"Orrey, please. Don't you see? I can't leave now." Linnet makes a familiar turn of the wrist with one hand and a sweeping dancelike move with the other, a beatific smile crossing her face. "It's all back, and the library showed me how." The muscle memory may still be there, but nothing stirs around Linnet's hands.
As Linnet goes to leave, as Orrey goes to follow, the weapons surrounding Bast rattle and hum, with promise, with potential, just waiting...
Yves isn't so much fighting Isa as making feeble noises of protest along the way, because he's got work to do, c'mon, there are experiments languishing back there in all the... water or whatever...
"Yves, if I shake you you're going to pass out. So quit fighting me and let's get out of here. We need to find Linnet so she can patch you up." Isa's own obvious scrapes and bruises go uncommented upon.
"So I'm going back to talk to Alexander some more, and then I'll meet you all and you can come pick me up in a few weeks, probably. You'll be fine, and I'll be even more powerful, and it'll be fantastic." She resumes her climb back down the bookshelf.
"Linnet..., Linnet you can't..." Orrey chokes up. "Linnet, you CAN'T FLY!" He sobs that last, trying to keep her from heading down.
Bast remains in front of the selection of firearms, fingers gliding gently over stocks, sights and barrels. "Waste of fucking time. All of this." He glances over his shoulder, fingers curling over a large-caliber hunting rifle.
Yves is muttering something about pushy firefighters and their regulations and reflective blankets and foam and hoses and... and.... stuff.
Isa props Yves against one of the less jagged chunks of rubble, and takes a flask of red liquid from her belt pouch. "Drink this, so I can slap some sense into you without breaking your neck."
"Bast is having a bad day, we know that. But...yes, it would make sense to have you two with me if I'm going back into the library. Bast? Want to grab a gun and fight off some husks so I can learn more about how to blow them away?"
Orrey says to Linnet as gently as he can. "There's no winds around you right now. Anything you're feeling is just the Parasite messing with your head." Orrey adds.
"I'm fine," mutters Yves, who looks about three whiny sentences about his work projects away from passing out. But he begrudgingly accepts whatever it is that he's being offered, if only so that he can get back to work.
Isa nods, and waits for Yves to drink it all down, like a good boy...before she slaps him.
"Of course there are." Linnet makes a familiar playful gesture that she used to use to ruffle her friends' hair. "Orrey, what's wrong? Can't you see I'm happy here?" But she's starting to sound a little desperate.
"Yeah, I see it." Orrey looks down as he can't meet her eyes. "But it's not real." He looks up. We need to go, the other way."
A hand grabs Linnet roughly by the shoulder and spins her around. "You are not going anywhere. Until. You Explain. Yourself. This asshole-" he gestures angrily towards Orrey "-sneaking in after us, that's one thing. But you? Were you that angry we didn't keep Perilune?"
He's holding a gun in one hand. That looks new.
Yves chugs woozily, then more aggressively, and puts down the bottle to demand--well, whatever it is he was about to say is lost in the slap. "WHAT THE--oh. Ohhhhhhhhh."
"Should have known better than to turn my back on you," Bast growls.
Isa nods. "Yeah. We should wait here until either they emerge or that...thing tries to fuck our brains again."
Linnet screams, crashes to her knees on the armory floor, and bursts into tears.
Something sharp rests against the right side of Bast's neck, and a woman's voice, stern and commanding, "Drop the weapon."
"Kinda hoping for the former," Yves says shakily. He gets to his feet. "But, uh, they're all... They'll be... I'm sure they're fine."
"Forgotten protect us all." Orrey whispers as he watches the interloper. Orrey throws a green fireball just over his sister's head."
Isa helps Yves up, then looks around. "I hope they will be. If I knew how to get to them I'd already be going to help, but...." she sighs. "We have to trust them," she says, as if it were forced from her.
"Trust, hope, and patience," Yves says. He wraps his arms around himself. "My dad said those were the cornerstones of raising kids, back when we were..." He takes a very deep breath, and lets it out slowly.
"Back off, Cass." Orrey says.
The interloper's head snaps up at the searing green flame, lowering their guard.
By the time she gets to "weapon", Bast is already dropping to the side, his new gun coming up in an arc to knock the blade away. The impact knocks it out of his hand as he rolls away, and it goes off with a deafening blast as it hits the floor.
Isa paces, looking at the rubble, and the ropes, and the path that leads back to the depths. "You trust people to do their duty," she says, half to Yves and half to herself. "That's what we have. If you can't rely on people you have to do everything yourself."
"You trust people to do their best," Yves says softly, "and sometimes their best isn't enough, but there's no way to know for sure until... well. Yeah."
(Nothing about this situation stabilizes Linnet, who is curled into a tight knees-hugging ball and sobbing hysterically at this point. She's not going to be much help.)
At the sound of the blast Orrey flies forward to block the bullet without thinking.
Orrey's lunge gets him right in front of the barrel as it goes off, and the bullet blasts through him, launching him into a spinning trajectory that slams him down behind Cassiat. Blood pours from the wound, and he coughs out a red spray on the floor.
Isa leans against a slab, sighing. "They'll get out. They'll band together and pull each other through. They've got to."
Cassiat screams and rushes to Orrey's side.
At the sound of Orrey hitting the floor, Linnet quiets, sniffles, wipes her face, and stands up straight. She takes three long steps toward Bast and, before giving him time to think, reaches down and grabs him by his shirt front, hauling him up to face her.
She shields him from Bast, throwing her arms out wide, her back to the moogle, just in case. Staying in between.
"Not exactly what I intended." Orrey says. "Bast, are you back to you again yet?" Orrey sits up with Cassiat's help. "I think I'll be ok." He pulls out a potion and downs it.
Yves nods, arms still wrapped around himself, rocking on his heels. "They will. You woke me up, and I woke you up, and you pulled me out and got me awake again, and there's more than two of them. Between them, they'll be even better at working through this."
Isa nods, reassured. "Linnet's there, she's the peacemaker."
"Now listen up, you scruffy little son of a breeze." Linnet keeps her voice low, but with as much anger as you have ever heard packed into her voice. Her arm is shaking, so she props Bast against the wall for better traction.
Bast stares past Linnet, aghast at the sight of the hole in Orrey - then his eyes swing back to a much closer Linnet than he's used to.
Cassiat checks Orrey again, and then pivots, scooping up her spear and brandishing it defensively, crouched in front of Orrey to keep Bast at bay. After a moment, she angles the barrel of Bast's dropped weapon away, and then tries to scoot it back to Orrey, for him to take it and defend himself.
Yves unwraps his arms, and goes to give some rubble an uncertain poke. "...I don't have any levers on me, and this is way beyond 'lift with your knees,' huh."
"I understand we're all having a rough time today. I understand there's a scary outsider thing that took over a Guardian Force trying to worm its way into our heads. HAVING SAID THAT. This is at LEAST the third time in the past hour you have threatened the life of one of your officers, and now you've actually fucking shot one. Don't look at me, take a good long goddamn look at Orrey. Open your hands, shut your mouth, and memorize that sight."
Orrey examines the weapon with a morbid interest.
Isa finishes shoving a Bast-sized block of stone out of the way. "At least it's keeping busy while we wait. I'd feel....useless otherwise."
"Orrey, let's get out of here. I'll talk to the captain," Cassiat says. "We'll take you home. You're not safe here."
"That was you. That is what happens when you lose control. And if Orrey hadn't found us a handful of Ethers several weeks ago, I would be all but unable to help him out of here. I am your medic, I don't pick and choose who I save; it is my responsibility to keep this entire crew alive and in the same number of pieces in which they started. And I would appreciate if my captain did not actively hinder that part of my duties do I make myself clear don't answer that just nod."
Yves stares at rocks, and says, "Let me figure out which ones make the most sense to move first. I'm better at thinking about stuff than--well, not when something else is in my head, I guess. Can't logic through confusion. If it were logical, it wouldn't be confused."
"When we get back to base, you are going to take some time to yourself and have a good solid think about communication, about working as a team, about your responsibility to the people you command, and about how you are going to prevent something like this from ever happening again. And then you are going to sit down in the galley with me and explain in great detail what you've thought through, before we set one toe out of base again. Because clear communication helps prevent serious fucking mistakes like this one, and if we have more serious fucking mistakes like this one, you're not going to have a team much longer. I'm going to set you down now, and if you pick up a weapon, you are going to stay at the front of the party and facing front until we get our collective ass out of here. Do we have an accord, Captain?"
Bast closes his eyes slowly - then opens them again, looking directly back into Linnet's as he nods. His voice is barely audible over hers. "...it's not just trying."
"We'll talk about it when we get back. I'm barely holding together as is right now, do not make me drop the tough woman act or I'll collapse. Now, can we move on?"
Orrey growls to Cassiat. "Put that damned thing down. I'm not going anywhere without my friends. It's the Parasite, not them. It's amusing itself by playing with their minds. And it's fucking pissing me off."
Yves shuffles around the rubble, trying to point out good handholds.
"Much like your captain, some might say." Orrey adds.
The swords and shields rattle clear of their decaying shelves, red light shining from within, the firearms pulsing with that same light as the walls rearrange themselves to give the barrels solid aim at the four intruders in the armory.
"Everybody, we gotta go, NOW!" Orrey shouts as he gets up, holding the new gun.
"And if any of them is still thinking they're, I don't know, back in school or something, we know to kick them a bit," Yves says, with the first spark of cheer in a while.
Orrey spins up his watch and a purple clock flies out to Haste Cassiat.
"Oh thank goodness it's you two RUN there's crazy stuff after us wait this is the room with the busted floor how do we get out of here?!?!?" (Somehow that all comes out in one breath, if not necessarily comprehensibly.)
Isa lets the last stone fall, and gets "What took you so..." out before she sees the absolute state of the other half of the group. "Right. This way."
"Time for some orb running," Yves suggests, satchel clutched and following Isa's lead.
Half a dozen swords spin out of the ground behind Bast and Linnet, clattering all around.
The ground splits beneath everyone's feet, sand from the beach starting to pour down into the crack.
"GO GO GO!" Orrey shouts, running and glancing back over his shoulder and trying not to stumble.
Up ahead, the Meteor and Seventh Dawn wait at the water's edge, the Dawn already humming.
Isa will let herself be swallowed by the earth before she loses track of a party member, this time, as she brings up the rear. "Everybody in we're gone!"
Cassiat slows. "Orrey, before you go, I'm sorry about--" she starts, fumbling for words even as she flees.
Yves bounds onward, chanting "nope nope nope nope NOPE NOPE NOPE" as he goes.
As he leaps on board, Bast glances back to make sure Aurin managed to keep up.
Aurin was the first one onboard, outpacing even Yves, and has dashed ahead to start the preflight procedure.
"Cass, there's something we have to do before you go!" Orrey runs alongside her, and as soon as he's sure they'll both make it out of there, he swings the butt of the gun he's carrying around to slam her hard in the gut.
Cassiat goes down in a heap, all air forcibly expelled from her lungs as she turfs into the Dawn's ramp.
"Cass, I'm sorry!" Linnet calls over the side of the boat, spinning up a group heal immediately as soon as everyone's on board the Meteor.
Isa throws herself into the pilot's seat of the Meteor, picking up where Aurin has laid the groundwork and trying to get the launch into the sky as quickly as possible.
"Sorry sis, you told me to!" Orrey shouts as he runs away over to the Meteor. He whispers to himself, "Just remember I'll always take a bullet for you! ALWAYS!"
The entire island splits in two as the Dawn takes to the sky, the Meteor dipping low into the water as the ocean starts to race into the festering sore on the world.
"...well, there goes that return visit to the library."
Chid's boat vanishes into the maw as Meteor pulls itself up into the sky, leaving the twisted remains of the Edge of the World behind as both airships blast back to the west.
Isa pulls their course away from Seventh Dawn as soon as possible, so as not to lead them anywhere near where Starfall waits.
"Are you safe?" Yves whispers toward his satchel. After all, he knows Linnet has everyone else covered.
The Seventh Dawn banks north, seemingly equally eager to break away from the Meteor.
Orrey collapses back against a wall, leaning his head against the gun that shot him.
Before he returns to captaining duties, Linnet catches Bast by the arm. "Captain, I apologize for the tone but not for the content; I was completely serious. Once we get Aurin back home and get a little downtime, we'll have that talk. Thank you." She gives her boss a peer-to-peer nod and bustles off to fuss over Orrey.
Inside Yves's satchel, Principia lets out a rustling sigh, mourning what all has been lost.
"I'm so sorry," Yves whispers to the book. "Though I'm glad you were able to leave, but... I'm so sorry."
Orrey smiles wanly at Linnet's fussery. "You know he wasn't himself down there."
Aurin slides down to the ground, staring straight ahead with his jaw slack, breathing heavily, trying to make sense of everything that has happened in his head.
Bast finally relaxes his white-knuckled grip on the rigging as the distance from the Seventh Dawn and what's left of the island grows. When Linnet leaves, he's still staring at the horizon.