Chapter 14: Island of Golems
Chapter 14: Island of Golems
Cliff
THE strongest Silver Golem in history finally came alive. Granted a name and life after four years of slumber, the silver body rose to its feet. Cliff could only watch on in horror as it happened.
“Oh no…!” Lovel said under her breath. She tried to run toward Sephiroth but Cliff’s hand shot out to seize hers.
“Lovel, it’s too late!”
“But…!”
Sephiroth towered over them. They couldn’t see the top of the monstrous silver body without tilting their heads back. Sephiroth spun the massive spear in his hand, brandishing it. But Sephiroth didn’t swing the spear down on them; he thrust it overhead. The spear pierced through the ceiling with a thundering crack and the night sky appeared through the hole.
“He’s trying to go above ground!”
Cliff didn’t let go of Lovel’s hand, holding her back as she struggled to follow them. Sephiroth swung his spear, sweeping out every pillar in his vicinity. The ceiling collapsed and the Research and Development Room began falling apart around them.
“We have to run, Lovel!” Cliff tugged on Lovel’s hand and ran for the exit.
Grinzam’s voice echoed behind him. “Be good little children and wait patiently for me here. Once I finish destroying the Church, I’ll come back to take my time with you.”
“Grinzam! Stop this, Grinzam!” Lovel shouted.
Cliff looked back to find Sephiroth picking up Grinzam and Jair on the other side of the falling debris. Just when he saw them disappear out the hole in the ceiling, the room caved in with a deafening bang.
Cliff and Lovel narrowly escaped seconds before it collapsed. The electric lights in the corridor flickered, then went out. The research facility’s electrical grid must have sustained damage.
Lovel moaned in the darkness, “The Church! All the Golems on the archipelago are going to go berserk…!”
“Let’s go after them, Lovel! The hole in the ceiling isn’t the only way out. We’re headin’ back to the station!”
“Okay!”
They retraced their steps back to the platform in the dark. They fumbled their way along until they stumbled into the hidden station platform. A train car with broken windows waited where they had left it. Cliff saw the small flicker of a flame coming from a lighter inside.
“Ouka?!” Cliff called, running inside the train with Lovel. Kiriko was sobbing beside a blood-covered Spinoza.
Ouka held his lighter toward them and said, “…You came back?”
“Ouka, that man—”
“Spinoza died.” Ouka gently laid Spinoza on the floor and closed his eyes. Cliff couldn’t find the right words to say in the face of Ouka’s weary expression. But Ouka pushed through his feelings to ask them, “I heard a huge explosion not too long ago. What the hell was that?”
“Grinzam beat us to it…! Sephiroth fell into their hands!” Cliff said in a rush of words.
Ouka’s cheek twitched.
“Sephiroth just flew outside and is targeting the Church,” Lovel explained. “If we don’t stop him, this island—this archipelago is done for!”
“B-But…this train won’t move without power,” Kiriko pointed out, wiping away her tears. Cliff didn’t understand what kind of contraption an automatic train was, but he could tell it needed electricity to function.
“Then, we’ve just gotta walk out of here…” Cliff reasoned, reaching to borrow the lighter from Ouka.
Ouka shook his head. “And what will you do when you get there?”
“What?”
“Dram’s the only fighting power we’ve got left, and he can’t move anymore. And his Tamer, yours truly, ain’t in such pretty shape either.”
“We can’t give up now…!”
Sure, what Ouka said was correct, but Cliff didn’t think he was the type to give up now, of all times. Lovel and Kiriko shot him questioning looks too. Ouka smiled at them.
“…We can’t leave things the way they are. So, we’ll have to change Dram’s Tamer to somebody healthy, with fight left in them.” Ouka’s hand shot out and he swiped something from Kiriko’s waist—the tranquilizer gun and bullets for putting a person in suspended animation.
“Ouka, what are you thinking?” Kiriko looked skeptical. Ouka ignored her and loaded the bullet into the tranquilizer gun.
“Listen up, Cliff. This gun puts the Tamer in suspended animation, severing their link to their Golem… This frees the Golem to havin’ their Restrictor overwritten and their name changed,” Ouka said, pressing the gun against his stomach. Everyone gasped.
“Ouka, you can’t be serious…!”
Ouka pulled the trigger without the least bit of hesitation.
“Ouka!”
The gunshot cracked into the air before Kiriko could stop him. The tranquilizer bullet stuck out of Ouka’s stomach. He smiled down at it with satisfaction.
“Now my link will be severed! So, from here on out,” Ouka held Cliff in his gaze and declared in clear voice, “you Tame Dram, Cliff!”
Cliff drew in a breath and looked at Dram—at the amber beast with mighty legs.
“He’s hard to control, and might even go berserk on ya right away…but this is the time, if ever, to try …!” Ouka insisted as his expression sunk into drowsiness.
Cliff nodded and replied, his voice firm, “…Thank you very much, Ouka.”
“I’m countin’ on ya…please…save…this archipelago…” Ouka’s eyelids fell shut.
Kiriko squeezed his hands and cried, “You idiot! Doing this when your body’s injured to this degree could kill you for real…!” Kiriko and Lovel both stared at Ouka, worried and distraught. Obviously, Cliff was worried too, but they didn’t have any leeway for standing around moping.
“Miss Kiriko, please look after Ouka for us,” Cliff said, turning to face Dram.
The light vanished from the letters on his forehead, and black Engrave Incantations floated to the surface of his amber body—evidence that Dram’s link with his Tamer had been cut, returning him to a Prime Body.
Once he saw the blue color fade, Cliff pressed his fingers to Dram’s chest and overwrote his Restrictor. His new Restrictor: “can move today only.” There wasn’t a stricter or more powerful Restrictor out there. It would manifest the highest efficiency and usability in Dram, at the price of his existence.
But Cliff had no choice but to take drastic measures. With his youth and inexperience, there was no other way to use Dram like Ouka.
I’ll bear the sin of killing him. I’ll agree to any punishment. Once everything’s done and over with, I’ll atone for what I’ve done, Cliff swore, and began sonorously chanting the incantation.
“My name is Clifford Evans. With truth as my witness, I give thee the name Dram. Live as one with me and return to dust with me. I order thee to take Lovel and me to the Church!”
Those words brought Dram back to life. He crouched down on the ground, offering Cliff and Lovel his back. They exchanged looks.
“Let’s go, Lovel,” Cliff said.
“Okay!”
Cliff mounted Dram first with Lovel hopping on behind him. Kiriko called out to them as they were about to disembark the train.
“Lovel, there is something I want to ask you before you go. Grinzam attempted to bring your mother back with Sehem-hamphorasch. If I understand correctly, you can use the cube to recreate the dead’s personality and memories… But what about the body?”
Lovel’s expression darkened ever so slightly. Kiriko pressed on. “Even if you can bring back the soul of the person, how do you prepare a body for it? Aren’t you aware of where Grinzam tried to obtain that body from?”
A moment of silence hung over them until Lovel quickly and quietly answered, “I wouldn’t know… I just want to stop him. I want to protect the archipelago containing my nostalgic memories.”
Cliff didn’t really understand the meaning behind their conversation. A ghost of a smile graced Lovel’s lips and Kiriko smiled sadly back at her as if that answer had told her everything.
Then Kiriko reached out to Cliff, handing him a gun. “Cliff, there shouldn’t be more than three bullets left, but…please take it.”
It wasn’t her tranquilizer gun, but one of the real revolvers Heaven’s Gunner used. Cliff accepted it with mixed feelings.
“…You can run away, you know,” Kiriko said after passing him the gun, her voice tender and kind.
“I won’t run!” Cliff boldly declared.
“You think I’d run?!” Lovel exclaimed.
Cliff smiled at Kiriko’s worried and tired expression, and raised his voice. “Time to go, Dram!”
Answering his call, Dram leapt from the train car.
Dram landed on the platform and hopped down onto the railway tracks. He took off in a full-speed sprint into the darkness lying beyond.
The amber lion loped through the pitch-black tracks with his two passengers on his back. The light glowing from his forehead faintly illuminated the path ahead. The feeling of Lovel’s warm arms around his waist kept Cliff grounded in reality as the cloying darkness closed in around them.
Some time passed before Lovel softly whispered at his back, “…Hey, Cliff, we ran through a dark railway like this before, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, I was hella desperate to escape then.”
“I totally thought Kiriko was going to be right on our tail.”
“Right? Strange to think now that she’s our ally.”
“She just wouldn’t believe me, even though I told her the real enemy was causing chaos elsewhere,” Lovel said, a smile in her voice.
When he heard her voice, Cliff thought back through the time he had shared with her until today. Memories of fleeing the Torah Church and fighting Kiriko in the underground station came to mind first, then escaping into the town at night with the activated Gandolf. The night he had chatted with her in the abandoned mine, the moment they had reunited at the church, and her many different smiles flashed through his mind.
There was a lot he didn’t know about Lovel. He still had plenty to ask. But the questions he had weren’t enough of a reason not to trust her.
He had been able to fight because she was there. He could continue fighting as long as it was for her, even if the opponent was the master he’d admired for three years, or the Silver Golem Sephiroth, or the strongest Rabbi in Church history. Cliff would have no regrets, no matter what awaited him.
“Lovel, I’ll protect you, no matter who I have to face,” Cliff told her. “You bore the burden of Gandolf with me. So, it’s my turn to bear the burden with you. If you so wish, Grinzam’s—” Lovel’s arms tightened around Cliff’s waist, stopping him from finishing that oath.
“Cliff, I don’t want you to bear any more than you already have…” she whispered in a ghost of a voice. “You have a future. A bright future, where you’ll break free of the dark and live in the light… So, I won’t put this on you. I won’t let you shoulder my burden.” Kindness filled Lovel’s voice, but it was just as sad and lonely.
Cliff’s heart squeezed and his chest ached. “…I want to live that future with you,” he quietly confessed, likely to a crying Lovel.
He heard a faint smile in her quiet reply, “Me too. We’ll be together forever… So, I’ll protect you as well. We’ll definitely save this archipelago together!”
The pain pushing down on his chest ceased with her words. That was all he needed to hear. Her promise made him feel like he could trust her to infinity.
“…We will, without fail,” Cliff assured, slipping a hand over hers.
Just then, he spotted light at the end of the train tunnel, from the underground Torah Church Station.
Cliff concentrated using every nerve in his body to imagine Dram’s moves. He mimicked what Ouka always did to convey his command to Dram, his Golem now.
“Jump, Dram!”
Obeying his command, Dram sprung onto the platform. He continued running up the staircase leading above ground. When they exited the station, not a single soul was in sight in the Church’s front garden. Cliff turned to the north. Considering the location of the railway tracks, Sephiroth would likely come from that direction.
Within seconds of gazing north, Cliff glimpsed a gigantic silver shape, far beyond the Church complex.
“We have to fight that thing…” Cliff shuddered and the hair rose on the back of his neck in anticipatory fear of a silver body so giant it was visible from over a kilometer away.
The only weapons at hand were Dram and the revolver from Kiriko. Cliff pulled the red cube from his pants pocket and frowned at it.
“Damn it all! If only we’d made it in time with this!”
Without a powerful Prime Body, the invaluable red cube was worth less than garbage. They could bury it in the dirt to create Adamah, but the simple Clay Golem would be only fodder before Sephiroth’s spear.
Lovel must have come to the same conclusion, because she asked, “Cliff, is there a huge Prime Body somewhere?”
“Even if there was one, it’d never be big enough…!”
With Gandolf and No. 11 destroyed, there were no more large-scale Prime Bodies around. A Prime Body that could hold its ground against Sephiroth just didn’t exist.
Sephiroth’s arrival was imminent. Lovel’s voice was submerged in hopelessness as she muttered, “If only we had a Prime Body…!”
A Prime Body? A single idea lit up inside Cliff. He lifted his head as the thought struck, and put it into words.
“Lovel! Golems powered by the cube gain the ability to regenerate, right?”
“Uh? I-I think so?”
“In that case, there might be a Prime Body we can use for this.”
“There is?!” Lovel’s eyes widened.
Cliff commanded Dram, “Let’s go, Dram!”
Dram sprung into a dash again. They left the Church grounds, crossed Neck Bridge, and raced toward Chest Island. The entire way, Cliff thought of how the Torah Church controlled the archipelago, how their rule forbid the existence of any overly large Prime Bodies for any period of time. Every time someone had built one, the Rabbis eventually discovered it and destroyed it.
Yes, the Prime bodies were destroyed, just like how the Church had torn down Cliff’s metal giant four days ago.
Dram ran through the center of Chest Island headed for the shop located at Flank Beach Market. Their destination came into view before long.
“We’re here!” Cliff said and hopped off Dram.
Lovel looked at the shop’s sign. “Akizu Company?”
Cliff took Lovel’s hand, helped her off of Dram, and circled to the back of the barracks. Metal wreckage glowed under the moonlight.
“If I can just attach these arms and legs, we’ll be set…!” Cliff fixed his eyes on the wreck, on the arms and legs that had been torn off, on the iron head left on the ground, and on the rusted body that stood almost four meters tall when pieced together.
Before them was the nameless giant Cliff had made with Master Roche. It was likely the sole extra-large metal Prime Body left on the entire archipelago. It stood as the last plausible way to fight Sephiroth with any chance of success.
“Cliff…!” Lovel exclaimed in awe, walking over to the metal giant. She wrenched open the iron plate covering its chest and placed her hand inside, inserting the red cube. Meanwhile, Cliff used Dram to help attach the limbs and head to the metal torso. He pieced it back to what it had looked like before the Rabbis destroyed it.
“Lovel, you name it,” Cliff said.
“What should we…name it?” she asked back.
Cliff nearly told her to name it Gandolf, but that didn’t fit right. Gandolf was the name that belonged to the Golem Cliff and Lovel had killed.
“You decide, Lovel,” he answered.
She nodded and began chanting, “…My name is Lovel Sinclair. In the name of the 72 gods, I give thee the name Aru.”
Her voice echoed into the night sky. The cube inside its chest glowed and the metal giant’s torso shuddered with a jolt. The limbs and head laid on the torso began to fuse together while giving off an unusual sound. Cliff clenched his hands.
It succeeded!
The opening in the chest closed and the limbs merged with the torso. In the blink of an eye, the broken metal giant transformed into a Prime Body with all five parts attached.
Lovel watched and raised her voice as if in prayer, “Live as one with me and return to dust with me. I order thee to defeat Sephiroth!”
Thus, the metal giant known as Aru rose powerfully to his feet. Cliff felt as if he were dreaming. The embodiment of his dreams, that he thought would never move, now launched into motion, granted life and a reason to fight.
“Let’s go, Cliff,” Lovel said. Cliff nodded.
Two people and two Golems strode toward Head Island. Aru advanced down the causeway leading to the Church with heavy, pounding footsteps.
On their way, Cliff asked Lovel, “Why did you name him Aru?”
“I borrowed the name from someone who was once a great Rabbi… I always wanted to name my son that if I had one,” she answered with a lonely smile.
They saw the Church’s Great Bell Tower looming ahead. The sky beyond it was beginning to grow bright, informing them dawn was near.
***
Chest Island’s Doctor, Crank Getz
Getz’s Clinic
INSIDE the clinic’s cellar after Grinzam had left, Getz stitched together the slice in Erie’s chest, though she no longer moved.
“Don’t die, Erie!”
He understood the soul of the girl he knew was gone, but her body wasn’t dead yet. Without the cube that powered her body, Erie’s vitals were nearly nonexistent. Combined with the amount of blood she had lost, her chances of survival were close to nil.
But Getz didn’t want to give up on her. His sickly wife, his daughter born with the same illness, and the Golem bearing the same name as his daughter—having failed to save every person most dear to him, Getz could only think, Like hell am I going to go through that horrible experience again…!
Regret inevitably filled him for failing to stop Erie from confronting Grinzam. Thinking back, his life was full of regrets. That was why he was doing whatever he could in this dire moment. Impelled by those feelings, Getz treated Erie to the best of his ability.
After a strenuous procedure, he finished her stitches. The anesthetics affected her pulse, weakening it to a dangerous level. Getz began preparing for a blood transfusion despite the odds. As he prepared the IV, he suddenly saw something move out of the corner of his eye.
Is something here?! He spun toward what had moved. It sat up in the corner of the room—the boy, who had stopped moving entirely after the cube was removed from Erie’s chest, sat up.
“Heath?!”
Heath, covered from head to toe in red Engrave Incantations, began to move once more.
“I-Impossible! You have no Tamer now…”
Despite decades of research into Fresh Golems, this was a first for Getz. He had never seen a Golem, berserker or otherwise, move without a Tamer.
Heath picked the knife up off the floor and looked at Getz. Getz froze, his muscles stiffening. Heath merely gave a tiny bow and quietly ascended the stairs.
“Wh-What was that?!”
Lightning flashed through Getz when he saw Heath bow. His mind went straight to one conclusion, as he was the very man who had concluded that Berserker Golems evolve into a separate life-form.
“It can’t be…”
A Berserker Golem was liberated from the Restrictor placed on their bodies. They attacked their Tamers to free themselves from the final Restrictor—their link to the Tamer.
But Erie’s soul was long gone. Grinzam had taken the embodiment of who she had been this past year and embedded it in Sephiroth. Her red cube, Getz knew, was most assuredly inside Sephiroth now.
The last Restrictor binding Heath had vanished. Without anything to bind it, a life had been born in the truest sense of the word.
“That’s Erie and Heath’s…”
That was no Golem—no embryo. It was a person born of Heath’s body, the father, and granted life by Erie, the mother.
It was their child.
***
Cliff
CLIFF and Lovel returned to the Church to find Sephiroth destroying the tall perimeter fence, trying to force his way inside the grounds. Chaos fell once again upon the Church that had sat stiller than death after the last battle.
“God save us all! What is that monstrosity?!”
“Is it a Golem?! Who’s controlling it?!”
Screams and shouts could be heard from inside Church grounds. Some of the Rabbis were still around.
Dram entered the Church complex through the chapel and raced through the winding corridors until he exited into the center courtyard, where the Great Bell Tower loomed. The archipelago would perish if this tower was destroyed.
“Where’s Sephiroth?!”
Cliff and Lovel wildly scanned the area until they saw something jump over the building surrounding them on all sides. The silver giant landed on the ground inside the courtyard with a deafening BOOM! Cliff felt the shockwaves through the ground twenty meters away.
Cliff stared speechless up at its mighty form. Sephiroth softly lowered Grinzam and Jair down from his arm.
Cliff and Lovel weren’t the only ones out in the courtyard trying to protect the Great Bell Tower. One of the elders, clad in magnificent vestments smeared with blood, staggered from the shadow of the tower.
He was one of the Church elders who often gave sermons inside the chapel. A Brass Golem, just under two meters tall and dressed in knight’s armor, stood at his side.
The elder glared at Sephiroth and strained his hoarse voice to shout, “I won’t let you heathens get away with this…! Do it, Saint Rollins! Defeat Sephiroth!”
Obeying his voice, the Golem bestowed with the name of the archipelago drew his sword of gold. Sephiroth’s spear flashed as Saint Rollins lunged.
The spear cut through the air in an ear-piercing whoosh, eclipsed only by the shriek of metal. The Brass Golem’s sword and head were severed in a single blow.
“Oh…” the elder uttered in a dumbfounded voice. The headless Golem slowly collapsed onto the ground.
Grinzam watched it fall and bluntly said, “Why are you so surprised? You’re the ones who had this monster created.” His voice had lost its gentle, mild-mannered tone, sounding more like Jair’s. Cliff guessed this was how he spoke when he was still a Rabbi.
“EEEEEKKK!” The elder tripped over his own feet as he tried to flee. Sephiroth swung his spear without mercy. The spear flattened the elder, reducing him to a slab of bloody meat.
“Grinzam…!” Cliff yelled. Cliff and Lovel dismounted Dram and glared at their enemies. Grinzam and Jair slowly turned toward them.
Aru chose then to finally make his late arrival. He hopped over the complex’s tall roof and landed inside the center courtyard. Sandwiched between Sephiroth and Aru, four people exchanged deadly glares.
Her face radiating with anger, Lovel questioned, “…Grinzam, is this what you wanted?”
“This isn’t all I wanted. My true objective comes after the Church’s demise.”
“Your true objective?”
“I’m going to bring back two lost lives: Jair’s and yours,” Grinzam said, heading for the Great Bell Tower. He opened the door as he gave his final command. “Jair, this is my last order for you. Use Sephiroth to destroy this Great Bell Tower—with me in it.”
“What?!” Cliff and Lovel frowned. Only Jair nodded, his face flat and devoid of emotion. “Grinzam, what are you trying to do…?”
Grinzam spoke to Jair without answering Cliff. “I’m counting on you. Once you finish this, you will be Asusrad Grinzam.”
The tower door shut and Grinzam vanished within, leaving Cliff and Lovel behind. Jair looked up at the bell tower, as if contemplating something.
Cliff addressed the side of his face, “Jair…no, Master Roche.”
Jair turned around slowly. No expression showed on his face.
“You’re Master Roche, aren’t you? I heard all about how you used to be Grinzam’s disciple.”
Jair didn’t answer.
Cliff looked at Aru and said, “Do you remember when you created this Prime Body with me? We said we’d bring him to life someday, but today he moved thanks to Lovel.”
Memories of his time with Roche flickered through Cliff’s mind as he spoke. He pressed on, to break free of the nostalgia. “Master Roche, didn’t you once tell me, ‘The girl I love lives on Head Island. That’s why I worked my butt off to enroll in the Academy’? I can now really understand how you felt. So, I will be the one to stop you, for Lovel’s sake too.”
Lovel nodded in agreement. Then Jair, who had kept quiet, finally spoke. “…How many times must I tell you for it to sink in, your Master Roche is no more.”
Cliff thought he heard something sentimental in his voice.
“I am Asusrad Grinzam’s other self. Jair is merely a name used for convenience’s sake while Grinzam’s still alive.”
“You’re another version of Grinzam…?!” Cliff couldn’t believe his ears.
“But I can tell you were a very important person to Roche. It’s the least I can do out of respect to you both to crush you with all the power at my disposal,” Jair said. Sephiroth brandished his spear. Aru stepped forward to protect Cliff and Lovel.
The air froze between them. When the tension reached its peak, Jair and Lovel shouted their commands in the same breath.
“Go!”
“Take him down!”
Obeying their Tamers, the two massive Golems charged. They kicked up clouds of dust and dirt in their wake, and the ground shook with a deafening roar. Giants so huge that Cliff had to keep his head back to see their heads, clashed face to face in the space between Cliff and Jair.
Aru swept the tip of Sephiroth’s spear away with his hand. Sephiroth blocked Aru’s fist with the spear handle. Silver sparks flew with every hit, ringing out in cold, earsplitting chimes like a broken bell. Aru steadily closed the space between them while repelling a volley of storm-like thrusts.
“Aru, kick!” Lovel shouted. Aru, in turn, redirected the momentum of his forward charge to whip his leg into a crescent arc, striking Sephiroth from the side.
Sephiroth flew backwards with an explosive boom. The over four-meter tall body of silver arced through the air as it flailed, and crashed into the building behind. The impact shook the building down to its foundation as innumerable cracks sprung across the outer wall.
“Wow, he’s incredible…!” Cliff exclaimed despite himself. He was awestruck by Aru’s big frame and deft movements that transcended Golem limits on every scale.
Lovel shook her head beside him. “Our enemy is just as incredible.”
Cliff’s eyes widened. Sephiroth had drilled a hole through Aru’s abdomen without Cliff noticing. He must have driven his spear through him in the split-second Aru executed his crescent kick.
“That’s the Golem Ouka and his team devoted their whole lives to after all!” Lovel acknowledged. Jair flashed her a faint smile in return.
Sephiroth wielded his spear once more. He approached Aru more prudently this time, sliding his feet across the ground to keep his body completely stable.
“…Lovel, can I leave the battle here to you?” Cliff whispered in her ear. Lovel nodded. She understood what he planned to do.
“I’ll be just fine! You take care of Jair!”
Cliff took her words to heart and hopped onto Dram’s back. “Go, Dram!”
Dram broke into a run with Cliff riding him. He shot past Sephiroth’s legs to the other side.
There was no question Aru could stand his ground against Sephiroth. But defeating him was another matter. They had no means to destroy the cube in Sephiroth’s chest. It’d be too difficult for Aru’s crude metal fists to penetrate Sephiroth’s silver chest plate.
So I have to be the one to do somethin’ about it! Cliff thought as he directed Dram to run toward Jair in front of the Great Bell Tower.
“Pin him down, Dram!”
Dram lunged for Jair at Cliff’s order. Without stepping out of the way, Jair caught Dram’s face in his palms.
“How?!”
Jair had intercepted Dram’s charging leap with both hands. The ground gave way under his feet and he slid back several meters, yet he held his ground and kneed Dram in the chin.
“Whoa!”
The kick sent Dram, along with Cliff, into the air. Cliff hit the ground first, and Dram’s heavy amber frame fell onto his outstretched arm. He heard a disturbing crack.
“AAGGHHH!”
Searing pain coursed through his elbow. He ordered Dram to move off him and saw his right arm wrenched at an absurd angle.
It’s broken…!
Enduring the pain that threatened to empty the contents of his stomach, Cliff looked up at Jair from flat on his stomach. Jair stood there with cold detachment, as though nothing had happened.
Cliff heard something slam down behind him, sending the ground quaking under him. He looked over his shoulder to find Aru splayed on the ground.
“ARU!”
Sephiroth ran straight for the shrieking Lovel. Sephiroth caught her without giving her a moment to escape.
“AAAH!”
Sephiroth’s left hand closed around her neck and yanked her off the ground. He drew back the spear with his right hand and thrust it toward Aru.
“Protect your chest, Aru!” Lovel choked out.
Aru guarded his chest with his hands. The spear pierced into his hands with a sharp squeal. Sephiroth leveraged the weight of his body to press down on the spear, and it ate into Aru’s chest with a shrill grinding noise. Agonized moans escaped Lovel’s lips as Sephiroth’s other hand clenched tighter.
“DAMN YOU!” Cliff shouted at Jair. “Dram, get him!”
Dram dropped back on his legs and sprung toward Jair. Cliff dragged himself forward at the same time. Dram swooped down on Jair with his fangs bared. Jair caught the jaw between his hands yet again.
“A futile attempt, no matter how many times you try—” Jair’s remark was cut short. Cliff slid headfirst and swept out Jair’s legs with his left arm.
Jair fell face-up and Dram pinned him down. Cliff saw Jair’s face right in front of his eyes. On the ground, Cliff grabbed the front of Jair’s shirt and yelled at him.
“Master Roche! Please stop Sephiroth!”
Jair’s chest, right hand, and legs were pinned by Dram, sealing his movements.
“What good comes of destroyin’ that bell tower?! We won’t be able to make Golems on this island anymore if you do that!”
“That’s a good thing. This archipelago doesn’t need worthless Golems.”
“Lies! That’s not something Master Roche would say! Master, didn’t you once tell me we’d become amazing Golem Tamers someday?”
The conversation took place around the time they had first met. Cliff had been carving some driftwood he picked up into the shape of a Prime Body. While he worked, an older boy came over and struck up a conversation with him about Golems. They became quick friends.
Cliff had been with him ever since that day. He thought they would be reunited even if they lived apart. He believed they would both become magnificent Golem Tamers and meet again inside the Academy’s lavish garden.
“I was able to persist in making Golems because I met you. I could keep working hard at it, until today, because you told me I have talent.”
“…I have no memory of that.”
“I will never forget it, even if you have! We wanted to become Golem Tamers! This is the archipelago of Golems! The islands of Golem Tamers! This may be an unreasonable island created by the Church, but I love this archipelago, where all my best and worst memories were made!” Cliff shouted, feeling like he was about to cry. “Please, Master! Please stop doing this!”
He had no alternative but to try and talk him out of it. Cliff never wanted to consider killing him as a means to stop him. Jair shook his head regardless of Cliff’s pleas. His left hand shot to his pocket, and he yanked out an object and buried it in the ground beside him.
“…Master, what are you—”
Struck by the realization of what that action meant, Cliff pulled back from him. He knew full well what Jair had buried.
“My name is Jair! In the name of the 72 gods, I give thee the name Adamah! Live as one with me and return to dust with me. I order thee to remove that Amber Golem!”
Within seconds of Jair’s incantation said in a single breath, the ground where he buried the cube glowed, and a hand made of dirt burst out.
“No!”
The dirt hand grabbed Dram’s torso and the two-meter tall Adamah rose from the ground, lifting Dram up with it. His limbs now free, Jair sprung to his feet and locked his eyes on Dram’s forehead.
“Crud! RUN, DRAM!” Cliff shouted, but it was too late. Jair drove his elbow into Dram’s forehead. “No…”
Cliff watched, helpless to do anything about it. The elbow strike accurately erased the “e” from Dram’s forehead. A fleeting click reverberated through the Amber body. Pieces of amber fell like snow on the ground. Dram had been shattered to pieces with a single hit.
Jair walked over to Cliff as he weakly called, “Dram…!” Faster than he could climb to his feet, Jair’s kick sunk into his chest. “Gah!”
Cliff’s ribs broke with a muffled crack. Intense pain shot through his brain.
First my arm breaks, now my ribs! Cliff stubbornly hung on to his fading consciousness. He clenched his teeth to brace himself for the next hit.
But the follow-up strike never came. Cliff lifted his face from the dirt and stared at Jair.
“…Strangely enough, your words sound familiar, almost nostalgic,” Jair admitted sadly. “But these are not the emotions of Asusrad Grinzam. I was born to become him. As such, I should abandon these feelings.”
Cliff frowned at his confession. He was beginning to understand what changed his friend. “Master, is it possible you…”
Adamah lumbered slowly toward Cliff. His right hand seized Cliff’s throat.
“I can no longer return to being Roche… I was born in exchange for his life,” Jair said, his voice quiet. Adamah tightened his fingers around Cliff’s neck.
In the exact moment that Cliff’s life tipped precariously over the edge, a single flash of light cut through the dark, severing Adamah’s right arm.
Both Cliff and Jair followed the flash with their eyes. A knife stuck out of the ground, about five meters away. Cliff recognized that knife.
Isn’t that the knife of…?
Cliff’s eyes searched where the knife had flown from, and noticed a silhouette drop down from the Church roof. The figure landed on the ground and ran toward them at lightning speed.
Lovel, recognizing who it was from where Sephiroth had her suspended in the air, called out his name. “Heath!”
It was Heath, covered in red Engrave Incantations from head to toe. He yanked the knife out of the ground and flayed Adamah with it. In a matter of seconds, Heath chopped Adamah into countless crumbling pieces.
“Why is this Fresh Golem here?!” Jair yelled.
Cliff called out to the surrounding building, “Erie! Are you here, Erie?!”
No one answered him. No one understood why Heath was there, or how he was still moving. Heath swung his knife at Jair without a Tamer telling him to do so.
Jair caught the slash with his right hand, and the knife sliced clean through it. Blood spurting from his wound, Jair kicked Heath away and shouted, “Sephiroth! Defeat this Fresh Golem first!”
Sephiroth pried his spear from Aru’s palms. He drew back his right arm and threw the spear at Heath. The spear sliced through the wind with a zip of sound, flying in a straight line like an arrow. Heath leapt up a second before impact and kicked the spear back in the air.
Shock overtook Jair’s features. The spear spun through the air and pierced into the ground, right beside Aru.
“Aru, the spear!”
Aru grabbed the spear at Lovel’s command. Sephiroth tossed Lovel aside and made a fist. Spear and fist lashed out at the other’s chest. BANG! Scarlet sparks flew with the metallic clangs.
Silence followed. The spear had been thrust deep into Sephiroth’s heart. Sephiroth’s fist had also pierced through Aru’s chest.
Aru stopped moving and Sephiroth’s massive body shuddered.
The two metal giants collapsed on the ground in a mushroom cloud of dust.
“Impossible…” Jair uttered, overcome with his shock.
The red glow started to vanish from Heath’s forehead. But even then, he wouldn’t give up on getting revenge until the very end.
Heath spun around and focused on Jair. He held his knife aloft.
Electricity shot down Cliff’s spine. Lovel shouted at Heath, “Don’t!” But he ignored them and threw his knife at Jair.
“MASTER!” Cliff’s cry echoed through the courtyard. Heath’s knife flew in a fast, precise line—and pierced through Jair’s chest.
“…!” Violent shudders wracked Jair’s body.
The knife passed through him and pierced into the wall of the bell tower. The smell of blood doused the vicinity. At long last, all of Heath’s Engrave Incantations vanished. As they stopped working entirely, Jair slowly fell, face-up.
“Master!”
“Jair!”
Cliff and Lovel called for him and ran to his side.
A butcher’s knife sized hole had been opened in Jair’s chest. Vast amounts of blood gushed and spurted from him. Cliff saw a red cube tumble out of his chest, mixed with the blood.
“No way…” Cliff stammered in shock.
Cliff had vaguely considered the possibility before, but couldn’t believe it until he saw with his own eyes. Looking over his shoulder, he asked, “Lovel, did you know?!”
Lovel didn’t answer his question. Sadness and pain contorted her face when she saw Jair’s injury. Cliff sensed she had known all along about the cube in his chest.
She quickly picked up the cube and reinserted it in Jair’s chest. The skin around the injury immediately tried to fuse, as if jumpstarting the healing process. Inserting the cube had activated its power, but the hole was far too large for the regeneration to take effect fast enough.
“Oh no…he’s not healing!” Lovel said in a quivering voice. Jair’s hand jerked into motion and pressed down on the cube in his chest.
“…I lost?” Lifeless eyes turned to Cliff and Lovel.
After a short pause, Lovel quietly said, “…So you were Grinzam’s double, after all.”
“Yes. I am a doll embedded with a cube that is engraved with all of his memories, in order to make his dream come true,” Jair said in a weak voice, staring down at his bloodied chest.
“What do you…mean?” Cliff asked.
Though he had vaguely guessed the answer, he couldn’t stop from asking.
Jair shifted his gaze to Cliff. “I am a being that had Grinzam’s personality embedded in the body of the boy you call Master, after he was put into suspended animation with the tranquilizer drug,” he quietly explained. “Humans with the cube buried in their chest transcend the rest of humanity. We gain the ability to use the Remote Engrave Incantation which surpasses human knowledge, along with super strength, and regenerative abilities. And above all else, we exist as the only beings capable of Taming Golems powered by the cubes.”
Those words made Cliff’s heart ache. He knew of others who fit that criteria.
“Do you understand?” Jair put the question to him. “Cubes with the Restrictor ‘can’t kill humans,’ and cubes without Restrictors. Tamers capable of thought and reason, and monsters without reason. Combining the two is when you finally obtain a completed weapon. That’s the real way to use Sehem-hamphorasch.”
Cliff thought back to how many times Jair had cornered him and his friends, yet he only ever directed his Golems to kill them, without ever directly raising a hand against them. He couldn’t do it himself because of the Restrictor placed on a person embedded with the cube.
Out of the corner of Cliff’s eye, he saw the destroyed giants. Sephiroth and Aru were two monsters embedded with the cubes. But Cliff didn’t want to think about what that meant right now. He simply listened to what Jair had to say.
“But halfway through, that stopped mattering to me. I just wanted to bring Catalina back. All I wanted to do was start anew, and live with her in place of Grinzam, who had lost everything.” Jair touched Lovel’s cheek. His hand was soaked in blood, but she let him touch her.
“That wish didn’t come true. Things didn’t go according to plan, and it seems that…I’m not completely Grinzam’s double after all,” Jair confessed, returning his gaze to Cliff. A ghost of a smile dimpled his cheeks. “‘The girl I love lives on Head Island.’ I said that to you, didn’t I? It’s not as though I can remember it, but for some reason, those words ring so terribly true…”
Jair stared into Cliff’s eyes. His expression was so very like the person Cliff knew.
“…Master Roche.” Cliff’s heart overflowed, seeing that nostalgic expression again.
In barely a whisper, the boy said, “It appears I’m not Grinzam. But your master no longer exists either. So who am I, then?” He gazed up at the dawning sky. Speaking more to himself, he said, “I have no name. All I have is a temporary name and life. Someone tell me, what is my name?”
“You’re Jair!” Lovel said loudly through her teary voice. “I know all about you. You loved Lovel. You’re the tiny disciple who loved her!”
Jair directed empty eyes toward her. His lifeless eyes softened with a smile. “…Thank you,” Jair whispered and quietly closed his eyes.
Blood poured from his injury, pushing the cube out of his chest. The cube fell onto the ground and broke with a tiny crack.
***
CLIFF and Lovel cried over Jair’s body for some time after he had passed. Once their tears had dried, they laid Jair on the ground, shut his eyes, and wiped their tears.
“…Cliff.”
“Yeah!”
Cliff put his hand over his chest pocket, where he had placed the revolver Kiriko gave him. He confirmed it was still there and turned his eyes on the tower door. Grinzam was waiting on the other side. Lovel lent Cliff, who was severely battered, her shoulder. He leaned on her for support to the tower and opened the door with his unbroken hand.
Deep inside the dimly lit tower, the man behind it all stood leaning against the spiral staircase railing.
“So you’re the ones who came… I find it hard to believe, but it looks like Sephiroth lost,” Grinzam commented, looking at the two beaten-up children leaning on each other for support.
Cliff returned his gaze and answered, “Yeah. Your plan failed, in exchange for a great number of sacrifices and victims.”
“I prepared everything over eight years to make it happen, too,” Grinzam said softly, his eyes gleaming with an air of confidence.
“Tell me, Grinzam, what did you mean by, ‘I’m going to bring back two lost lives?’” Cliff demanded in a sharp, biting voice. It was the last question left unanswered.
Grinzam sneered. “You haven’t heard about it from her yet?”
“From Lovel? Heard what?”
“You just asked the wrong question again. The woman beside you isn’t Lovel.”
“…Excuse me?” Cliff instinctively looked at Lovel. She averted her eyes from him.
“Stop it, Grinzam!” Lovel said, pain lacing her words. He didn’t heed her request.
“In that case, I’ll be the one to tell you our story that began eight years ago and continued until today. It’s the least I can do to reward you for defeating Sephiroth,” Grinzam said, beginning to narrate. “I ran away from the Church with Jair after Catalina died. I told Jair to go to Chest Island, while I remained on Head Island… I had unfinished business. My deep-rooted desire to bring Catalina back and get revenge on the Church, that is.”
Grinzam had a distant look in his eyes. Cliff and Lovel listened to him without a word.
“I changed my face and name, and chose the Academy dormitory as my hiding place, because Lovel was there. I became friendly with Catalina’s daughter and collected information on Catalina through the stories Lovel told me about her mother.”
“You collected…information?”
The unsettling hunch that had been nagging at Cliff surged to the front of his mind. What had he done with the information he collected? What did it mean to bring a person back? Grinzam was answering those questions for him now. While he wanted to know the answer, he wished he could cover his ears.
“Eight years passed like that. I had gathered the necessary Engrave Incantations and information to input into the cubes. All that was left was to find a body to house Catalina’s soul… But that was the one thing that seemed beyond the bounds of possibility to artificially create.”
But what about the body? Where does it come from? Those were the very questions Kiriko had asked Lovel on the train.
But there was a body, a perfect body that looked so very much like the woman Grinzam was trying to bring back to life.
“Then about a week ago, Jair appeared before me. I was shocked to see him for the first time in eight years. I asked him what he had come to the Academy for. He told me, ‘I always wanted to enroll in the Academy Lovel attends.’”
“…No way!” Cliff gnawed on his lower lip.
“He apparently spotted Lovel at the dormitory. And then he dared to speak of his joy to me…! My disciple had been harboring feelings of love toward Catalina’s daughter ever since they met as children! He loved the girl who had the same face as the woman I loved!” Grinzam’s voice trembled from anger, and most likely, sadness.
“Can you comprehend the outrage, the bitterness I felt in that moment? I had lost my face, my name, and my youth! Yet Jair had obtained the life I yearned for from the deepest depths of my heart.”
Grinzam’s face contorted into an ugly expression. Venom and something dark and sinister flashed in his eyes. “I made up my mind when I realized his feelings! I decided to take back what I lost, to start over with Catalina on this island, and to use Jair and Lovel’s body to make that happen!”
Grinzam looked at Cliff as he spoke. Untold loneliness and insanity burned in his eyes. “Don’t you get it yet? Inside the chest of the woman you call Lovel—”
“Stop it!” Lovel screamed to cut him off.
He spoke over her screams, “—is Sehem-hamphorasch, engraved with the personality of her mother, Catalina.”
He laid the truth bare for Cliff.
“…No…” Cliff’s vision swirled. It was the truth he had purposely turned away from. He looked to his right, to her face.
“I’m sorry for deceiving you…” Lovel, no, Catalina said, with tears in her voice. “I had every intention of removing the cube from my chest and disappearing without anybody noticing when this all ended… This body is Lovel’s. I don’t want to live again by sacrificing my daughter’s life,” she whispered and dipped her head.
Cliff couldn’t find the words to say to her. She had hidden the truth from him because she knew Cliff would try to stop her if he found out.
Grinzam continued speaking in place of Cliff’s silence. “I inserted Catalina’s soul in Lovel’s body and my soul in Jair’s body… Doing so would allow us to take back the lives we lost. I put Lovel into suspended animation with the tranquilizer and embedded the cube in her chest. Then I summoned Jair to me, and did the same to him.”
“…!” Cliff blanched
“He cursed at me the entire time he was still conscious. ‘How can you sacrifice Lovel for such a thing? I’ll never help you!’ he shouted at me, but it was too late. Jair’s conscience eventually faded, and I embedded the cube in his chest… He was born anew—as my other self.”
Cliff saw no traces of guilt or regret for what he had done in Grinzam’s expression or voice. At the end of a life filled with absurdity and hatred, the man who had once been the greatest Rabbi in history lost his heart. He had transformed into a real demon in the time he was called the Heinous Traitor.
Yet for all that, he still spoke as if he had hope. “Catalina and I will be reborn. We will live together on this archipelago without Golems. Everything was supposed to go according to plan for our happy ending. But she went out of control, making my plans go awry.”
Grinzam shot a menacing glare at Catalina. “I put the Restrictor ‘can’t kill humans’ along with a second Restrictor, ‘love and obey Jair’ on Catalina. But for some reason, the second Restrictor failed to take effect, and she betrayed us!”
Grinzam trembled violently. He raised his voice with an enraged expression. “Why didn’t the Restrictor work?! If only it took effect, everything would have worked out perfectly!”
“…Master Roche did it,” Cliff said, as soon as the answer hit him. Catalina and Grinzam looked at him stunned.
They all realized the answer. There was only one person who could have removed the Restrictor under those circumstances. Only one person in that room would try to remove the Restrictor engraved in the cube embedded in Catalina’s chest that would have forced her to “love and obey Jair.”
“Master removed her Restrictor! He did it in the seconds before he fell into suspended animation after being administered the drug. He mustered the last of his strength and used Remote Engrave Incantation to do it!”
“That’s it!” Catalina breathed as if she came to the same conclusion.
Surprise colored Grinzam’s features. Cliff leveled him with a fierce glare and asked, “Can you understand how Master Roche felt, thinking of his loved one up until his final moments? Nah, there’s no way you could understand…”
But Master Roche would have. Cliff had no doubt the man he admired and looked up to would. Cliff felt the deepest, greatest admiration for Roche’s determination. Roche had saved Lovel from blind love, even in the face of his own demise. He had removed the Restrictor binding her and gave her a chance at a future.
“Grinzam, you were just jealous of Master Roche and Lovel. You were willing to sacrifice people left and right to bring Catalina back. Do you think she wanted that? Do you think this kind and gentle Catalina would want that? Like hell she would!” Cliff slapped the truth at the speechless Grinzam. “Listen to me very closely, Grinzam! You might’ve spent nearly a decade gathering information, but you learned nothing! You don’t understand a thing about Catalina!”
“Cliff…!” Catalina called his name in a quivering voice. Cliff held her hand, the hand of the woman he fought alongside for survival these past few days.
“Who you are doesn’t bother me. Tell me what you want me to do. I’ll fight for you no matter what you say.” Cliff knew the answer to his question before he asked it, and that was exactly why it made him want to cry.
Catalina’s face shimmered with the tears she held back as she answered him. “Defeat him.”
Those were words of resolve. They turned their eyes to Grinzam, who seethed at Catalina with the glaring wrath of a demon.
“You foolish child, you dare to defy the will of your Maker…!” The strongest Rabbi in Church history cursed at them. But Cliff wasn’t afraid of him. As long as she was by his side, he’d fear no one.
Cliff drew the gun. Catalina smiled beside him and resolutely said, “Let’s do this, comrade in arms.”
“Yeah!” Cliff shook off his sadness and answered in the liveliest voice he could manage.
***
“I knew it…you aren’t my Catalina.” Grinzam threw his arms out and spat in anger. “It would have been better if you had never been born!” Light emitted from his hands. Realizing what it could mean with a start, Cliff looked behind him. Engrave Incantations were engraving Jair’s corpse outside the tower, through Grinzam’s Remote Engrave Incantation.
“My name is Asusrad Grinzam. With truth as my witness, I give thee the name Jair.”
Cliff trembled, the greatest rage and fury he had ever known rising within him.
“Grinzam…you scumbag! How dare you!” Catalina cursed, squeezing the words out.
Grinzam continued chanting over them. “Live as one with me and return to dust with me. I order thee to remove the Sehem-hamphorasch from that woman’s chest and to kill that boy!”
Jair sprung to his feet and rushed into the tower. He lunged to pummel Cliff, but Catalina cut between them and held Jair back.
“Cliff, now’s your chance!”
Cliff nodded and steadied the gun. He pointed the muzzle at Grinzam’s chest.
I can’t let Catalina be the one to kill him! The thought granted Cliff a resolve of steel. He held his breath and pulled the trigger.
The gun fired with a shockingly powerful recoil that threw his arm back, causing the bullet to only graze Grinzam’s flank. Cliff clicked his tongue and cocked the gun again. He heard a scream behind him as he did. He glanced back to where Jair was kicking Catalina.
“Catalina!”
The kick knocked her outside the tower and she tumbled on the ground. Jair turned toward Cliff, who ground his teeth. Their eyes met. Jair was going to attack him next. Now was his only chance. He only had two shots left!
Cliff adjusted his grip on the revolver and shot Grinzam as he turned toward him. Gunfire cracked into the air and blood sprayed everywhere. The bullet hit Grinzam—not in the torso or head, but his arm.
“So close, yet so very far!” Grinzam taunted, his lips curling in a sneer as he held his bleeding arm.
One bullet left!
Cliff felt a sudden sharp blow to his broken ribs while he tried to aim again. Jair had driven his fist into Cliff’s ribcage from behind.
“GUAH!”
Cliff flew with the impact and crashed into the tower’s inner wall. Agony roared over him, and his brain went numb. The gun slipped from his hand and slid across the ground, coming to a stop in the space between Cliff and Grinzam.
Cliff shoved Jair away and darted for the gun. Grinzam bolted to pick up the gun.
“URAAAAAAH!” Cliff yelled as he ran. His ribs screamed with agonizing pain with every jolting step. His broken arm jostled against his side. He endured the unbearable pain and dove for the gun. His fingers touched the grip!
Jair grabbed the back of Cliff’s shirt and dragged him away with his inhuman strength. The gun slipped from Cliff’s fingers and into Grinzam’s hands.
“…It’s your loss,” Grinzam jeered. Jair strangled Cliff from behind.
A weak cry lodged in his throat and his conscious mind instantly started to fade into the dark. Hands with strength impossible to throw off strangled Cliff. The strength drained from his body and his vision dropped away. Through his dimming senses, he felt Grinzam hold the gun to him.
Damn it! Damn it! Cliff screamed a voiceless curse and Grinzam wrapped his finger around the trigger.
A silver light soared toward them, cutting through the darkness.
Cliff opened his eyes as wide as they could go and saw it through blurred vision—the flash of light stabbed Grinzam’s chest.
“GAH!”
The blow sent Grinzam flailing through the air, and his back banged against the spiral staircase. The strength evaporated from Jair’s grip on Cliff’s neck. Cliff’s rapidly fading vision returned, and he located the source of the light.
It was a knife; the one and same knife that had pierced through Jair’s chest and lodged in the Great Bell Tower’s outer wall. Large amounts of blood gushed from Grinzam’s pierced chest.
“Im…possible…” he breathed, spitting up blood.
Did she do it? Cliff pushed off the ground with his good hand and looked in the direction the knife had come from.
Catalina stood in the tower doorway with the light of the rising sun at her back. Her shoulders labored with heavy breathing, in the same stance she had taken to throw the knife.
“Catalina…” Cliff said her name, his voice trembling.
She answered him gently, “…I told you, I won’t let you shoulder the whole burden.” As Cliff heard her soft voice, Grinzam tumbled and fell in a heap on the tower floor.
“This isn’t…how it’s supposed to be…” he said, voice hollow, continuing to cough up blood. “We’ll redo it…I’ll relive our…lives…together with her…” His voice quickly faded and Grinzam sank in a pool of blood.
Cliff paid him no mind. He ran to Catalina’s side without looking back. Grinzam had died, which only meant one thing for Catalina with her Restrictor, “can’t kill humans.”
“If it’s a Restrictor that can never be kept again after it’s been broken once—like ‘don’t kill’—the Golem will never be able to move again after breaking it the first time.”
Cliff hung his head in despair. The rules he had explained to her days ago pressed down on his chest.
I tried to kill him in her place because I knew this would happen.
He reached Catalina and lifted his head. There, he found her illuminated by the dawn’s light with a peaceful expression on her face.
“It’s all over, Cliff… Now I can disappear, and my daughter will be freed.”
“Catalina…!” Calling her name was the only thing he could do. She smiled at him and weakly shook her head.
“It’s Lovel… That’s what you’ve been calling me this whole time.”
Tears rushed to Cliff’s eyes.
She stared at him and said, “Say, Cliff? Weren’t these past five days a blast?”
It was true. They were the most fun days of his life. Cliff nodded over and over again. It was just, now those fun memories were being overshadowed by his sorrow. He was heartbroken that the girl he had fallen in love with was disappearing in his arms.
“Cliff, you know, I’m really glad I met you.” Her legs were shaking. Cliff wrapped his good arm around her and held her up. “It’s because I met you that my life, that was created against our will, gained meaning. I only lived for a short five days, but thanks to you, I’m glad I lived them.”
Tears spilled from Cliff’s eyes without pause. He let them stream down his face.
“Lovel, I’m glad I met you too. I began to live, in the realest sense, since meeting you…!” he whispered against her. She hugged him back. The strength was draining from the arms wrapped around him. Cliff could feel the soul slipping from her.
She flashed him a faint smile and whispered in a ghost of a voice, “Goodbye, Cliff…”
The life went out from her body with those last words.
“Lovel…” Cliff said her name for the last and final time.
He no longer got a response for it.
Cliff embraced Lovel’s body and cried nonstop in front of the Great Bell Tower, where no one else was left moving.