Epilogue
Kaidan
Having a million cameras in my face was hardly new, but I usually remained in the background. I wasn’t Jin, I wasn’t Mercy. I wasn’t the one who was played before the media to win approval.
Yet they’d asked me to do this particular press conference, and I hadn’t been able to refuse. It was the last thing I wanted to do, to drag this up, to speak on it, to bare all those still-bleeding wounds, but I had to.
“What were the casualties?” shouted one of the reporters.
“One hundred fifty-six is the number of confirmed dead or missing that we currently have. Given previous such incidences of stable dungeons, we should expect that number to change in the coming weeks and months. You can visit the official website for the most up to date numbers.”
“How are the cleanup and rescue efforts going?” another reporter asked.
“They will continue for months. The area is listed as an evacuated zone for the foreseeable future. Given the less populated location that it opened in this time, there was significantly less damage, but it will still take a long time before the area is safe enough for people to live there again.”
“How was the dungeon closed?”
Ah, that question. It astounded me that it had taken them that long to ask, given it was the most important part of this entire conference. It was the miracle beyond miracles, like a blessing none of us knew possible.
Stable dungeons had been a simple fact of life, a nightmare that plagued us but we couldn’t beat, only survive. Now someone had taken one down. It felt like the first time a person had brought down a lion, as though we’d discovered we could fight back and win.
“We do not have full knowledge of that,” I said, careful with my words, my throat tight.
The Guild had given me talking points, but I didn’t need them.
“What we do know is that squad S412, along with their guide, were near the dungeon heart. Beyond that is conjecture. A large wave of energy struck the portal, and we were able to identify the telltale marks of the dungeon collapsing prior to the portal closing ahead of schedule.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that while we won’t be able to confirm this for ten years, when The Pitt is supposed to open again, all current results and experts have come to the same conclusion—that The Pitt was successfully closed and destroyed.”
The frantic noise that sprang up from the crowd caused the headache that I’d finally managed to decrease to grow again. Then again, this was the first time that any official statement had come out.
In the week since The Pitt had closed, plenty of rumors had flown around—that the dungeon was closed, that there was a massive explosion inside, that the dungeon had never opened and instead it was some government attack that had leveled the desert community.
This was the first time they’d gotten any actual answers, where the truth had come out.
The truth being that the dungeon was gone, that it had been closed, for the first time ever.
“How is that possible?” someone shouted above the roar of the audience.
“We are unsure of that as well. As we had no one else near the heart at the time, we don’t have all the answers. This event will give the Guild many things to research, to learn how to replicate this to hopefully save many lives in the future.”
“What happened to the squad?” another reporter asked.
My throat closed, too tight to force words out.
I thought about Yun, that rare smile she gave even during the years when she had little to smile about.
I remembered how tough she’d been, how she’d kept going when I had seen how broken her insides were.
It was like she’d known she had a reason to keep moving.
Jin stepped onto stage beside me, taking over.
“Unfortunately, squad S412 did not escape the collapse of The Pitt. We believe they were able to destroy the heart, though we are unsure how. We suspect their guide, Yun Moore, played a part in removing power from the heart, enabling the squad to destroy it.”
“Will their bodies be reclaimed?” someone called out.
I stopped being able to hear the answers, the roaring in my head far too loud.
My friend—the only real friend I’d had—was gone. She’d been so afraid that The Pitt would end her, and I’d told her she was worried for nothing. I’d thought that her fear was outlandish, but in the end, she’d been right.
The fact that she’d managed to take out The Pitt first felt like a hollow victory.
Yun deserved a happy life, she deserved a future with laughter and a house and a damn dog. Instead, she got oblivion.
Jin finished the conference, and I had no idea how I ended up in one of the private rooms above the lobby of the Guild headquarters. I must have walked there, but I couldn’t remember it.
How was it possible that she was gone? I’d always know the unfairness of the world, had never been foolish enough to expect it to all work out as it should, but it had never hurt me nearly as much as it did right now.
A knock on the door had me calling for them to enter, my voice empty. I’d had one job, to tell the world what had happened, to stand up for Yun and the men she’d died with, but I hadn’t even been able to get through that.
What does it matter? She was gone forever. What did dead souls care about what the living thought?
The door opened, and a young woman walked in, a low-rank esper who ran errands for higher-ups. I had no idea of her name, hadn’t spoken to her. She was just one face in a sea of them.
Normally I offered a smile, even flirted a little. It meant nothing, but being jovial like that tended to make all of life easier.
I just didn’t have it in me at the moment. “Yes?”
She had an envelope, her hands trembling. Nervous, was she? “You received a letter.” Her voice cracked a little, proving how anxious she was.
I held my hand out, seeing no reason to prolong this all to make her comfortable.
She set the envelope in my hand, then rushed from the room. I stared down at it, not shocked by its appearance.
I often got letters to my official Guild address. Sometimes they were fan letters, sometimes hate mail, sometimes requests for guiding from espers who had been turned down by official channels. Some of those in the last category thought a personal plea might get them moved up the list.
It rarely worked, but it was my job to read everything sent to me.
The paper tore as I opened it, no return address on the front giving me clues. That led me to think hate mail, probably something calling me a whore, or an abomination, or perhaps it would prove to be someone who at least had an entertaining insult.
The letter was handwritten—a rather nice touch for hate mail. At least they’d taken the time to write it all out by hand. The only thing more touching would have been a letter created by cutting out pieces from magazines and pasted like an old ransom note. I hadn’t gotten one of those in decades.
Probably too difficult to find the magazines anymore…
I forced my mind to focus on the words written.
Hey,
You once told me that life gets better. I don’t know if you believed it, and I didn’t, but I finally figured out what you meant, and I’m glad I hung around long enough to find my better. Now I just hope you find yours.
Love,
Blizzard
I stared at the letter, the words sinking in and that tightness in my chest loosening.
Then again, if anyone could have survived this, if anyone was tough enough to make it out, well damn…
She sure was my best bet.
* * * *
Yun
I carried the wooden logs in my arms, the bark poking through my sweater and into the skin of my forearms. I’d bundled up, but the cutting cold of these mountains was something I’d never really understood before.
Having grown up in southern California, I’d thought I knew the cold. As it turned out, I knew desert cold—I didn’t know real cold, the kind that bit into me the moment I left the house.
Still, the quiet was nice, peaceful.
“What are you doing?” Carter sounded absolutely scandalized as he swooped in like a force of nature, more dangerous than the blizzard that had come through overnight.
He took the stack of wood from me like it weighed nothing.
Worse, he bowed slightly with a flourish, as though he wanted to make damn sure I was impressed.
“I can carry some wood,” I argued.
“You could, but you have us, so why would you?” He drew out would, as though I might have missed his horrible pun.
“You cut yourself,” Kenyon fussed, pulling my sleeves up and healing the wounds. I hadn’t even noticed how deep the bark had cut, probably due to the cold.
“Why the fuck are you even out here?” Ingram bitched as he wrapped his arms around himself. He really hadn’t gotten used to the weather at all over the past three months we’d lived here.
I blamed it on all the metal he had on him.
“You were busy,” I complained. “You never let me help out with anything.”
“You don’t need to help. You need to sit your ass down and relax,” Ingram said before wrapping his arms around me. He did it as though he were keeping me warm, but I was fairly sure the opposite was true. He wanted me to be his heater.
I rolled my eyes but walked back the short distance to the house, going along with them, which I’d found I’d done much too often recently. It was like after our almost-death, I couldn’t turn them down for anything anymore.
I needed to knock that off or they’d turn into pampered, spoiled little brats…
When we walked inside, Shear stood by the stove, wearing a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. The outside world might have been frozen over, but the fireplaces that rested inside our home kept it toasty no matter what.
I’d asked why we needed it so warm, since it felt wasteful. We could have just worn more layers.
Ingram had made it clear that if he had his way, he’d prefer if I remained entirely naked all the time, which meant the temperature would always be high enough to leave that a possibility.
A day where you won’t get naked is a day wasted, he’d said to me.